Programmed Heart
by Eldr-Fire
Summary: While on the run from a clever foe, Sakura and the crew confront the idea of artificial intelligence and what it means to love. FIRST PLACE in the AU Contest on the KakaSaku LJ comm. Warnings inside. Thank you voters!
1. The Gift

_AN: This is my entry to the AU Contest on the KakaSaku LJ Community. My chosen theme was "Science Fiction." Warnings: Violence, language, sexual language and situations (including some scifi hentai). Special thanks to ScaryRei for this one. :)  
><em>

_To get to the other entries and eventual voting thread (which should be up tomorrow), a link will be going up on my profile._

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><p>The Gift<p>

_an·droid (ān'droid') _  
><em> n. <em>  
><em> A robot or synthetic organism designed to look and act like a human.<em>

* * *

><p>Sakura leaned against the rusty metal counter and let out a great howling yawn.<p>

"Hurry it up," she groaned, drumming her fingers impatiently.

"Don't get your shorts in a twist," Tsunade growled back. She was bent out of sight on the other side of the counter, allegedly checking their vault at the Anchor 3 spaceport bank and post office. It was not the most reputable institution, but it had served them well for five years. The pockmarked guard with two heads and a missing eye was not one to pry.

Disgruntled, Sakura tugged down the aforementioned shorts. The sheer, lime green fabric clung to her curvy bottom, damp with sweat from the sweltering port. They were as short as she could get away with without being easily mistaken for an intergalactic prostitute. As bare as that left her creamy thighs, her calves made up for it; they were protected by bottle green combat boots. Her bubblegum pink suspenders ran tightly over her shoulders. They were usually the same color as her hair when her hair wasn't darkened by grease and smog. The black gloves on her hands had the fingertips torn off. Her white tank top was speckled in questionable stains, but nobody questioned them.

She twisted around so that her elbows were resting behind her on the counter. Buzzing her lips in total boredom, she took to observing the other patrons.

There was certainly a lot there to entertain a people-watcher. Groups of men with slimy blue skin loped past her, communicating furtively to each other in a series of clicks and whistles. A three-foot-tall young woman with hair so orange and spiky it might have been on fire elbowed past them, brandishing her seven-fingered fist at them when they objected.

A little further down there was an ominous figure, eight feet tall and swathed completely in a violet robe, who stood still while a short green man with an oblong head seemed to act as a translator of his rattling moans and sighs. Sakura watched for a while until a commotion caught her eye.

Near the heavy metal double doors that marked the entrance to the cargo bay, three people were involved in a serious scuffle. Two male orange reptilian humanoids with scaly faces and forked tongues were heckling a smaller, female figure. One of them was holding her arms behind her back as the other taunted her. Her mauve skin shone with sweat as she snarled up into the face of her assailants. Three naked breasts drooped down her chest; the reptile man with free hands began to paw at one with mild interest.

Normally Sakura wouldn't get involved in such affairs; different people had different kinks, and who was she to frown upon public displays of affection? However, the female didn't look like she was joining in the fun. Sakura began to stroke the gun in her holster, watching with a sharp eye…. just in case.

The orange humanoid dragged his clawed thumb down the sloping side of one of the female's breasts, nicking the skin and sniggering as a few droplets of violet liquid dribbled out. The female let out a heated string of curses in an unintelligible language. Sakura's aquamarine eyes narrowed, and when the reptile used his other hand to suddenly slap the female across the cheek, she pushed off the counter and marched over there.

She pushed past the jeering crowd that had gathered to watch, breaking into a jog as she approached the two reptile men, one of whom was now stroking the female's three purple nipples with some long and rusty mechanical object. The struggling woman entertained him so much that he missed the other one, whose heavy green boot came crunching into the side of his skull.

The rusty metal tongs fell to the floor with a loud CLANG and the orange man went down hard. He lay unmoving on the ground. A collective hiss issued from the gaggle of onlookers; Sakura gave them a sweeping, venomous glare, daring them to defend the alien she had struck down. Tense seconds passed before, disappointed, the crowd dispersed. Sakura was about to round on the unharmed reptile man but he scampered, leaving his partner prone on the grimy floor.

Released, the mauve woman readjusted her periwinkle kimono, which Sakura noticed was tied in the front. _Oops_, she thought, thinking that the men might have been customers, but the woman smiled gratefully at Sakura.

"Zey tried to pay me wis' zese," she said, holding up a few chipped bronze coins.

"Bastards," Sakura agreed.

The prostitute spat disdainfully on the unconscious reptile man, hitched up her skirt, and walked primly away.

Grinning, Sakura returned to the metal counter. To her dismay, however, she saw that there was still no sign of Tsunade.

"Where the hell are you?" she called over the counter. "I had time to break up a fight, and you're still down there counting coins?"

"Just shut the hell up and help me already," her commander growled. Sakura huffed impatiently but launched herself over the counter anyway.

She was greeted by Tsunade's wiggling behind, which had been squeezed into too-tight black leather shorts. Squinting through the dim light, Sakura crouched down next to her.

She swore loudly and obscenely at what she saw.

"Yeah, I know," Tsunade grunted. "I've been trying to get him out of here."

Cramped inside of their square vault was the body of a man. He was folded into a fetal position and didn't seem to be moving at all.

"Is he… dead?" Sakura whispered.

Tsunade, who was trying to tug out one of his folded arms, said, "I don't think he was ever alive." She pointed to the arm she was trying to grab. Sakura scooted closer, and when she squinted she was able to make out a serial number inked into his wrist.

Her eyes narrowed. "An android?" she said suspiciously. "What the hell is he doing here?"

"Ask him," Tsunade growled sarcastically. "Or, you could do something useful and help me try to get him out."

Wondering why Tsunade hadn't just asked her to help in the first place but deciding to keep her mutinous grumblings to herself, she launched her full body weight into trying to pull him out. Some androids were very fragile, but since they had mistaken him for a human this one seemed like a good model.

Together, it did not take them that long to extract his arm, his leg, and then the rest of him. When they finally heaved him out they fell back onto their rumps, and he lay sprawled in their laps.

Sakura looked down at him properly for the first time. The first thing she noticed was his hair; it was silver and fell in long spikes onto her thigh. She thought that if he were upright they might stand up on end.

He seemed to be wearing a chrome suit, but it was hard to tell if it was part of his body because it was so form fitting. He did have artificial skin rather than a bare metal skull, and it was probably even organic— it was a few shades paler than Sakura's own.

"Sakura," Tsunade muttered. "Look at his face. He's hurt."

Sakura whipped her head to look at his face. He was very handsome, but then, he had been designed that way. She scanned his face, and sure enough, there was a gash bisecting his left eye. Sakura put her naked fingertips to his eyelid and lifted it gently. His eye was unmoving and sightless, as if he were an unconscious human, and it was red like blood.

She inspected his other eye, which was charcoal gray. "The iris on the eye with the scar is red," she told Tsunade, letting his eyelid fall. "The cut looks surgical."

Tsunade shook her head. "Androids these days are so damn human," she said.

"Yeah," Sakura said. "He looks unconscious. Does that mean he's… deactivated?"

"I don't know," Tsunade snapped. "Let's leave him here, androids can be trouble."

Sakura frowned at her captain. "He's hurt!" she said, gesturing at his scarred face. "And if he was in our vault, shouldn't we at least find out why?"

Tsunade held up her hands defensively. "Fine, fine," she relented. "We shouldn't touch him. We'll take him to Shizune; she'll know what to do."

Shizune was the third member of their team and was their resident mechanic.

Tsunade heaved a heavy sigh and wiped sweat from her brow. "Let's get him up," she said. "It looks like all of the money is still in the vault."

They lifted him up— he was quite heavy, but Tsunade situated him bridal style in her arms. Or at least, she tried; her voluptuous breasts (the best that money and underworld connections could buy) were barely covered up by a beige shirt whose neckline plunged past her cavernous cleavage and made him very hard to position. Stifling a laugh, Sakura offered to take him for her, and so Tsunade transferred him to her arms with an embarrassed huff.

Tsunade led the way back to where their ship was parked. Growling menacingly at the gateman who leered at her chest with all fourteen of his gummy eyes, she paid him the required fee and stalked past him to their ship. Sakura followed as quickly as she could with the heavy burden of the android, whom she was supporting piggyback style.

_The Tonton _was a weather-beaten maroon ship that had seen fairer days but was not ready to give up any time soon. Tsunade waved at Shizune, who had been peeking through one of the small round windows; Shizune ducked out of the way and a minute later, a door creaked open and slowly ejected a metal gangplank.

When it had groaned into place, Sakura followed Tsunade up to the ship. It was a steep climb with an android on her back, but Sakura was eager to get inside so they could evaluate him. She had seen androids before, but never one who looked so human.

Tsunade went immediately to the controls, plopping down in the commander's chair. It was made of black leather, but fluffy tan stuffing leaked in several places. Shizune had retracted the gangplank and sealed the door before she spared Sakura a glance.

She gave a tiny shriek.

"What?" Tsunade snapped, not taking her eyes off the controls.

"You— you've brought a _person_!"

"Oh, that. He's an android."

Shizune gaped at her commander's back while Sakura set the android onto the floor. The pale orange shag carpet was not the most attractive, but she hoped it would be more comfortable for the android when he woke up.

_But wait, what am I thinking? _she thought as she sat down cross-legged next to him. _He's a machine. They probably can't even feel pain._

"Shizune," Sakura said. "Can you come and have a look at him? He looks unconscious to us, so we're wondering if you have to turn him on."

Weakly, Shizune lowered herself down next to the android's head. Shizune's outfit was much more modest than her those of her companions. She wore purple denim overalls that were rolled up to the knees and short black boots with pointed toes (perfect for a quick stab). A black T-shirt covered her chest _and _stomach — rare for women in the intergalactic treasure hunting trade — and large goggles were strapped to her face, although right now they were pushed up past her forehead.

"Where did you get this android?" she asked seriously, frowning as she inspected his condition. "I've never seen a model so advanced. I've never mistaken an android for a human before…"

She lifted his wrist, reading the serial number printed there. It had the appearance of a tattoo.

"Tsunade found him in the vault," Sakura explained. "There was nothing else with him."

"You mean we were robbed?" Shizune gasped, alarmed, but Sakura shook her head hastily.

"No, I only meant that he didn't come with anything else."

Shizune sighed with relief but frowned again as she looked back at the android. "Other than this scar, which seems recent, there doesn't seem to be anything wrong with him," she said. "We'll find out for certain when we turn him on."

"Do you know how?" Sakura asked. She didn't know why, but her voice was hushed. The whole situation was very mysterious.

"Well, like I said, I've never worked with this particular model before," Shizune answered. "It would have to be in a place that wouldn't have been jostled while he was in storage…"

"Try his dick," Tsunade suggested from the front.

Sakura blushed and Shizune clucked impatiently. "Of course it's not there. That would be really embarrassing, if his off button were pressed while he was in the middle of… you know…"

"Androids can't have sex!" Sakura scoffed, her face turning red, but Shizune shrugged.

"Technology is getting very advanced these days," she pointed out.

Tsunade snorted. "I was only joking. Why don't you check somewhere on his chest? Maybe near where the heart would be."

Shizune nodded and moved to check, but she wasn't sure how to remove his suit. It appeared seamless.

"I'm not quite certain…" she muttered.

"Cut it off," Tsunade said loudly, and Sakura raised her hand just in time to catch the knife that their commander launched across the control room. She handed it calmly to Shizune, whose face went red with anger.

"How many times have I told you not to throw sharp objects when my back is turned to you?" she demanded angrily, but nevertheless she took the knife when Sakura offered it to her and began to slice carefully through the cloth of his suit.

When she had made a thin incision a third of the way down his chest on the left side, she peeled away the split suit. It revealed a chest that looked like any other man's, except for that there was no hair on it, which Sakura found strange. Shizune pressed her head to the artificial skin.

"Oh my," she muttered. "It feels just like a real man…"

She coughed, blushing slightly, and then fell silent. Sakura kept quiet as well, and the only sounds she could hear were those of the machines that Tsunade was directing at the front of the ship.

Shizune shifted slightly to the left, then down a little, but then back up a fraction of an inch. "I think I've got it," she whispered. "He's ticking loudest here…"

She pulled back up and replaced her head with her thumb, pressing down on a spot on his pectoral muscle— or what had been built to look like one.

Sakura didn't think it was going to work, but after a split second of nothing, a whirring sound emanated from deep within his artificial body. Excitement needled through Sakura's veins as she watched him, and unbelievably, he began to stir.

His face twitched, and Shizune shrunk back with a small yelp. Sakura, however, unconsciously leaned closer, watching with fascination as his eyelids — the eyelids she had touched with her own fingers — began to flutter.

He did that for about half a minute until the whirring stopped and his eyelids fell still. For a horrible moment, Sakura thought that he was broken, but then he slowly blinked his eyes open.

He stared blankly at the ceiling. Sakura and Shizune waited breathlessly. Tsunade was sitting completely still, eyes glued to the controls but ears peeled for any sound from the android.

Then, he coughed. He brought a hand up to cover his mouth, and he kept his hand there as he sat up slowly.

Sakura was the first one he looked at. Her eyes widened into amazed round orbs as he made eye contact with her, but his mismatched eyes were void of expression.

"I…" His voice crackled, and he sounded like he was suppressing more coughing. "I can't… breathe very well…"

Sakura leapt to her feet and grabbed the closest thing she could find— a damp blue washrag. "Will this be okay?" she asked, waving it limply in front of him. He nodded, and she crouched down to tie it around the lower half of his face.

It looked bizarrely anachronistic against his sleek design, but he seemed grateful for it. His voice was muffled as he spoke now, but he didn't sound like he was going to cough anymore.

"Thank you," he said. He was still only looking at Sakura, who realized how close their faces were. She didn't move away, though; she was spellbound by the paradox of this machine looking at her and talking to her like a real man. An android this convincing must have been unimaginably expensive.

He blinked once. "Who are you?" he asked her.

"Me?" she stammered. "I'm Haruno Sakura, crewmember of _The Tonton _independent spacecraft." She hesitated but then added, "Who are _you_?"

"I think we'd all like to know that." The android turned his head to look at the source of the voice; Tsunade had swiveled around in her chair to stare him down.

"My name?" he repeated quizzically. "I am 01010011 01000011 01000001 01010010 01000101 01000011 01010010 01001111 01010111."

He had rattled off the stream of numbers with alarming speed. Tsunade cocked an unimpressed brow, and Sakura tilted her head to the side in confusion. Shizune, however, nodded knowingly. "Binary," she said. "I think I understood… Scarecrow?"

He nodded. Tsunade snorted derisively.

"Could have just said that," she grunted. "But where I come from, 'Scarecrow' isn't a proper name… Why don't we call you Kakashi?"

The android blinked, perhaps processing this new identity, and then he nodded once. "Kakashi," he repeated.

"Um… Kakashi?" Sakura ventured. He turned his head back to look at her. His expression wasn't so blank now; he looked interested. "If you don't mind me asking… where the hell did you come from?"

His pale silver eyebrows tilted downwards. "I don't know," he said, and he sounded disturbed by the fact. "I can't…"

"Can't what?" Tsunade interjected abrasively. "Tell us? What are you, a spy?"

"Tsunade—" Sakura said heatedly, but Kakashi the android interrupted her.

"Remember," he said, responding to Tsunade's question. "The last thing I remember is getting onto a ship…"

"Was it blue?" Tsunade asked sharply, and her two crewmembers knew exactly what she was thinking. Their archenemy, Konan, was the queen of an ice planet where they had once helped stage a rebellion to overthrow her tyrannical rule. The revolution had failed, and ever since she had pursued them in her sapphire ship.

Sakura frowned. _Please,_ she thought, _don't let him be from Konan…_

But, thankfully, Kakashi shook his head. "It was a white ship," he recalled. "I was with other androids. It doesn't feel like that long ago…"

Sakura exchanged looks with Shizune. Despite what he said, that could have happened at any time; for all they knew, he could have lost years and years of memory. Androids didn't age like people did.

Tsunade, however, seemed relieved. "Well then, you have no idea how you wound up in our vault on Anchor 3?"

Kakashi shook his head. "I'm sorry I can't be of more help," he said.

_"I'm sorry…" _Sakura had never heard an android say those words before. Hell, most androids didn't even use contractions.

"It's all right," she found herself saying. Shizune looked at her in surprise for comforting him. "If you lost your memory you can't help it."

He looked at her, and although the wet rag covered his mouth, the way his eyes crinkled told her he was smiling.

"All right," Tsunade breathed, and everyone turned to look at her again. She looked weary. "We're way past Anchor 3, so I suppose there's nothing for it but to let you stay."

Kakashi smiled again; Tsunade looked taken aback. "I promise I won't be a burden," he said.

Tsunade seemed wary. "We'll see."

* * *

><p>True to his promise, however, Kakashi proved to be anything but a burden. Shizune in particular appreciated his help with the technical running of their ship; he was a natural expert in mechanics. However, all of the time they spent together was spent working, so Shizune didn't talk to him much.<p>

"I don't mind that we don't talk, to tell you the truth," she confided to Sakura one day a week after his arrival when they were washing their hands together. "I think he's a bit creepy."

"Creepy?" Sakura repeated incredulously. "I think he's _fascinating._"

"I guess…" Shizune trailed off. Sakura was thoroughly surprised. She had expected Shizune of all people to be enthralled with such a humanlike machine, but apparently she found it off-putting.

Feeling defensive of him, Sakura sought Kakashi out when she left the washroom. She found him in the control room, sitting on one of the leather couches that lined the wall to the right of Tsunade's currently vacant chair. He was looking through one of the thick round windows there.

Sakura walked over to him. "Mind if I join you?"

He turned in surprise and looked at her. Sakura had stitched shut the cut they'd had to make in his suit, but he still wore the rag. "No, I don't mind," he answered mildly.

Something about his response made her smile. She sat down next to him, settling her rump into the soft cushion.

He had gone back to looking out the window. He had a long neck, but not anything that would have looked unnatural on a human. It looked thickly muscled, but it must have been an illusion… unless…

"How much of you is organic?" she asked him.

He kept looking out the window. "78.2 percent," he answered.

"Wow," Sakura said softly. "So do you have… muscles?"

"Oh yeah," he said, and this time, he looked at her. "My body is very much like yours, except for that I have circuitry that branches out from my electronic brain."

There was an awkward silence, and then to Sakura's utter surprise, he laughed. It was a much richer laugh than she had expected. If she didn't know better, she would have thought he sounded genuinely mirthful.

"It's nothing you have to look at," he said, and his mismatched eyes seemed to twinkle. Unsure for a moment, she couldn't help but laugh a little too.

He gave her his crinkly-eyed smile and looked back out the window. She followed his gaze, but she didn't think there was much to see; every now and then space got heart-stoppingly interesting, but most of the time it was a stretch of black nothingness. Right now their autopilot was set to cruise through empty space for a while. As Sakura looked through the window, she saw that they were passing a cluster of stars.

"Do you like looking outside?" she asked, wondering if he could like anything at all.

He took a minute to answer. "It interests me," he said.

Her heart dipped a little in disappointment. She wasn't sure why. "Do you have likes and dislikes? At all?" she added, a little dejectedly.

"Oh…" He looked down, and Sakura almost dared to say that he looked sad, if with an air of detachment. "There are things I prefer over others, if that's what you mean."

"Yeah," Sakura said. "Yeah, I think that counts." She smiled at him encouragingly, and he returned it before looking back out the window.

Sakura looked out the window again, this time with more interest. "I like stars too," she said. "I've just seen a lot of them, I guess."

"You haven't seen all of them," Kakashi said.

Her brow wrinkled. "No," she said. "There's an endless amount of stars."

They were quiet for a few minutes, gazing out the window into the eternal black space. Then Kakashi said, "Do you want to know how many there are?"

Sakura gaped at him in disbelief. "What, stars?"

He nodded. Sakura's jaw went slack with incredulity. "_Don't tell me you just counted them!_" she hissed, but Kakashi shook his head.

"No," he said, "but I did calculate the sum of an infinite mathematical series, and taking several factors into account—"

"The… sum of a…"

"Of an infinite series," he said, enunciating perfectly. "Taking the sum of it isn't the hard part, really. Using limits, you can find the sum as long as you have a solid mathematical model, which is the real challenge, but I was just thinking about it and I think that I came up with one that—"

Sakura shook her head. "Don't try to explain it to me," she said weakly, patting him on the shoulder. She was surprised by how firm and… manlike it felt.

"Okay," he said, shrugging. "But do you want to know how many there are?"

Her face lit up with curiosity in spite of herself, and she nodded eagerly. He seemed to hesitate, looking into her eyes, and then he leaned forward. Sakura sat still as a statue as he tugged down the damp rag to whisper in her ear.

His breath tickled the shell of her ear, and she suppressed a shudder. The answer left his lips in a gentle wisp of air. Her eyes widened as she heard.

"Wow," she breathed as he straightened and tugged his makeshift mask back into place. "That's so many…" She looked back through the grubby window, her eyes shining with wonder.

"Yeah," he agreed, but he didn't look back at the window. He was staring at her face, which was unblemished by worry or cynicism as she gazed captivated at the stars. Her lips were parted, and they looked very soft. He wondered if they would feel like his lips.

"Sakura!"

Startled, they both turned to look at the barking voice that had interrupted both their reveries. Tsunade's honey-colored eyes were narrowed in suspicion, and she jerked her head at Kakashi.

"Go make yourself useful," she ordered. "I want a word with Sakura."

Kakashi, who had conceded to Tsunade's authority from the beginning, dutifully got up and left the room. His feet padded almost soundlessly against the carpeted floor; his suit extended to his feet and formed a sleek shoe.

Tsunade waited until he had passed through the sliding door, hands on her hips. Sakura did not dare to say anything until she was spoken to; Tsunade seemed annoyed.

When he was gone, she rounded on Sakura. "What were you two doing?" she demanded.

Sakura frowned crossly. "We were just looking out the window," she said.

Tsunade did not look convinced. "I saw him getting awfully close to you, Sakura."

Anger rippled through Sakura. "So?" she said defiantly, tipping her chin up. "We were just talking."

Regardless of her protests, Tsunade was shaking her head. "Stick to humans, Sakura," she said, and her tone was serious.

Sakura flushed. "Excuse me?" she said, her voice shaking.

"You heard what I said. Stick to humans."

Scoffing angrily, Sakura retorted, "Oh yeah? What about that tentacle monster you—"

Tsunade sighed impatiently. "Okay, so the tentacle monster was a one time thing," she conceded hurriedly. "But at least it was _alive_."

"If you can call a slimy mass of twenty dicks and no brain alive—"

"He's a machine, Sakura," Tsunade said curtly. "He can't—"

But Sakura had heard enough. She pushed off the leather seat and stormed past her commander, jamming her thumb on the button next to the door that made it slide open with a _whoosh_. She swept through it in a rush, but Tsunade did not go after her.

She was fuming as she tore through the very narrow metal hallway, her footsteps pounding tinny clunks as she moved. How dare Tsunade talk to her that way? As if they had been doing anything but talking! That's all they had been doing. Talking.

Even though she was vehemently denouncing Tsunade's implications, a little voice in her head reminded her how her heart had fluttered when Kakashi whispered in her ear, and how she had felt a dab of warmth low in her belly. When faced with this evidence, Sakura brushed it off. It had been a long time since she had been with a man, and even longer if you didn't count the tentacle monster that she had snuck a go on when Tsunade was too busy getting plundered three different ways to notice.

She exhaled a miserable, frustrated sigh and manually wrenched open the door to her quarters. It was a small space with hardly enough room for her bed. Dresser drawers were imbedded in the walls, but she had squeezed in enough room for her weapons cache.

Plopping down on the edge of her unmade bed, she lifted one of her heavy guns from the trunk of weapons. Balancing the gun on her knees, she tore off her glove with her teeth and ran her bare hand along the surface. It was rough and riddled with mechanical holes and grooves.

She couldn't help but comparing it to how Kakashi's skin had felt. It wasn't anything like this. This machine gun was hard and unyielding, cold in her hands. Kakashi's shoulder hadn't been very warm, but it had felt like a shoulder. Like a human.

She stowed her gun back angrily and drew her legs up to her chest. Burying her face in her knees, she sat there for a long time.

* * *

><p>A few days later, Sakura was taking a break from reviewing maps to walk through the ship. Its small size was not optimal for taking long, thoughtful strolls, but Sakura made do with what she had.<p>

As she walked through the narrow passageway beyond the control room, she noticed that the hatch was open. It went down below deck to Shizune's jungle of wires and machinery. Sakura rarely had reason to go down there, but she knew for a fact that Shizune was in the shower and Tsunade was at the controls…

She abruptly abandoned any pretense of doing something more important and slid down the hatch. Disregarding the vertical ladder, she landed recklessly on the ground, but it wasn't a long fall.

She lifted her boot to make sure she hadn't crushed anything important, but she had made no impact on the thick stream of cables twisting beneath her. The floor was theoretically made of metal, but no one had seen it in a while now; it was too cluttered with machines and their endless sea of associated wires. A few naked light bulbs hung flickering from the low ceiling, but most light came from the humming monitors, which cast the long and narrow room in an eerie teal glow.

The noise of someone forcing a stubborn wrench to bend to their will brought her attention over to a corner of the room. Even in the dim lighting, his form was unmistakable; if he had been a human, Sakura would have expected him to have years of combat training to have such a lean and muscular frame. The sleek uniform he wore only served to enhance the masculine curves of his body.

_His mechanical body_, she reminded herself.

_Which is a full 78 percent organic,_ another voice in her mind couldn't help but interject._ 20 percent of your body weight is bone, but nobody accuses your boyfriends of dating a skeleton._

She brandished a mental fist at the warring voices and stepped gingerly over the mess of wires. "Kakashi?" she said, hoping not to startle him.

He wasn't startled, of course. He turned over his shoulder — the one that had felt so firm beneath her fingers — and she saw that he still had that ridiculous rag tied around his mouth.

"Why are you still wearing that?" she said, interrupting whatever he had been about to say to greet her.

He looked puzzled. "This is the only clothes I—"

"Not your outfit, your mask." She came to stop a few feet away from him. "Can't you reprogram your body to breathe in the air we have here?"

"Oh," he said, and he turned away from her, returning to whatever he was doing with the wrench against the wall. "I could, but it's kind of complicated…"

Sakura's face split in a grin. "So you're lazy, you mean."

"Something like that."

She clasped her hands innocently behind her back and leaned her torso forward in curiosity. "What are you doing there?" she asked.

He didn't answer right away; she watched the shadows dance across his body in the flickering blue light as he worked the wrench around a stubborn metal knot in the wall.

"This energy valve is jammed," he said finally. "When I can turn it, it opens a little compartment in the wall where I can plug in for some energy."

Sakura raised her eyebrows in surprise. "I didn't know we had something like that on our ship," she said.

Kakashi laughed. Considering that he had just described how he plugged himself into the wall like a common hairdryer, it was unnerving how natural the amusement sounded.

On the other hand, he had a nice laugh. "Maybe I can help," she suggested. "I'm stronger than I look, you know."

"If you could carry me, I should think so." He stepped back from the knob in the wall and handed her the wrench. She grabbed it firmly and tried not to let her gaze linger on his outstretched hand.

She swung the wrench around once and then stepped menacingly forward, bracing one green-booted foot against the wall. With her tongue sticking out between her lips she threw all of her weight into the wrench and twisted it as hard as she could. It screeched in protest, but with some rough negotiation she got the knob to jerk to the right. After that it was more willing to give, and in a few hard minutes' time she popped open the compartment on the wall.

It was only six by six inches, but it was all that was necessary to house a large round outlet.

Sakura stepped back, panting, and handed him the wrench.

"You _are _strong," Kakashi marveled.

Sakura grinned. "Yeah," she huffed. After a moment's hesitation, she continued, "If you don't mind me asking, what do you plug in there?"

Kakashi tapped the wrench thoughtfully against his chin; she watched him curiously.

"Anything, in theory." He glanced down at himself. "But it's a little high up on the wall…"

He let the sentence trail off ominously, and Sakura let out a snort. "You can't mean…" she sputtered, trying to conceal more embarrassed laughter. "You're an… an android…"

Kakashi only smiled mysteriously at her; she could see his grin stretching from the shadows playing off the mask. He set the wrench down on top of some unknown machine buzzing next to him and stepped towards the hole in the wall. Contrary to his suggestive implications, he flexed only his index finger and began moving it towards the outlet.

"Wait," Sakura said suddenly. He obediently stopped moving. "What'll happen when you put it in?"

He took a moment to consider his answer. Sakura watched his smooth face wrinkle subtly in thought. "I'll just kind of stand there, I guess," he said. "I've never watched another android do it. My eyes might look weird, though."

Sakura crossed her arms. "How often do you need to do this?" she asked.

Kakashi shrugged. "Ideally every day, but I can get by on a week without recharging if I have to," he answered.

"Do you ever get sick?" Sakura pressed. She hoped she wasn't sounding invasive, but Kakashi didn't seem to mind.

"No," he said. "Or at least, not like you do. Of course, if parts of my body start malfunctioning I won't operate at maximum performance…"

"But that's just what being sick is, if you think about it," said Sakura. A little nervously, she added, "Right?"

"Yeah," he said. "You can look at it that way."

His silver eyebrows came together in consternation. "I have been feeling a little funny since I came here, though," he admitted. "I've had a headache this whole time."

The idea seemed to give him a profound sense of disquiet. Sakura frowned. "Could be the air," she said in what she hoped was a reassuring voice.

She stepped back, gesturing towards the wall in front of them. "Don't let me get in your way," she said apologetically. "I don't want to you to start going berserk because I denied you your life juice."

He laughed again, but it was cut off as he stuck his finger into the outlet. Immediately his body went rigid, and Sakura stumbled a little in surprise, almost losing her balance on the hump of wire beneath her boot. The wall inches from his nose lit up with a white glow, which Sakura could only assume was coming from his eyes. A low hum droned from his body, not unlike that which came from a refrigerator.

Sakura watched with a slack mouth for several minutes. He remained supremely still, frozen with his finger in the wall.

After the initial shock wore off, Sakura cast her gaze around for somewhere to sit. She spotted a suitable metal box and plopped down, propping up her head in her hands. She wished she had asked him how long this was going to take. Of course, she didn't have anything much better to do, so she contented to sitting there and waiting for him to revive himself.

Although this was by far the weirdest thing she had yet seen him do, the conversation before had been so normal. Rarely had she had such an effortless rapport with a _human_ man, let alone an artificial one.

Were it not for the fact that he talked about things like recharging his power and calculating complex equations in the blink of an eye, she'd easily be able to fool herself into thinking he was human. Ever since they had first made eye contact when he woke up in the control room, the two of them had seemed to share a connection. Certainly there had never been a human man who listened so carefully to what she had to say, or for whom such a fondness welled up within her whenever she saw him…

Her gaze wandered down to his lower back. She flushed as she recalled what he had suggested — he was very handsome, after all — but he must have just been joking… An android couldn't really have human genitalia, no matter how realistic the rest of him seemed. What use would a machine have for reproductive organs? It would be a waste of resources to make his body produce sperm cells he couldn't use.

Then again, you could also argue that it was a waste of resources to give him a personality, but he certainly had one of those…

She shook her head back and forth like a wet dog, trying to send those thoughts flying like so many droplets of water from a soggy coat. It didn't work.

Resigning herself to the unavoidability of thinking about him, she sat there quietly, nudging a wire with her foot in boredom. It was unlikely he had even an inkling of awareness that she was here at all, but she wanted to keep him company. Being an android seemed like a lonely lot.

She didn't keep track of the time that passed as she sat there in the dim room with Kakashi. Time seemed static here. After an immeasurable stretch of it, she heard a series of beeps coming from his body and looked up.

The lights on the wall across from his eyes were flashing; Sakura squinted against the blinding white. Precisely ten flashes passed before the lights extinguished, and the finger stuck in the outlet twitched.

Kakashi groaned as he pulled away from the charger, shaking his finger as if it had been burnt. With his back still to Sakura, he tugged his arms over his head in a simple stretch. He didn't seem to notice that she was there; she watched silently as the muscles of his back shifted beneath the sheer material.

He turned around and blinked in surprise. His eyes still held a faint glow.

"Sakura!" he exclaimed. "I didn't think you'd still be here."

She blushed, but there was a bite to her retort. "I had to make sure you didn't wake up, forget who you were, and start blasting apart the whole ship."

He winked at her with his scarred red eye. "You've got to stay on your toes with me," he warned.

Sakura stuck out her tongue. She was shifting her feet idly along the floor, rubbing them along the grooves of the bundled wires winding across the floor like spindly black snakes. Her skin looked ghostly pale under the strange blue light.

She looked up thoughtfully at Kakashi. "I'm sorry if you didn't like being interrogated," she said, trying to make it sound like she hadn't been worrying about that for the past twenty minutes. "I ask all the questions, don't I? But I suppose you don't have any for me."

Kakashi's eyebrows skated skeptically up his forehead. "Don't have any questions?" he repeated. He sat down on a machine a few feet across from her, bringing one leg up to rest on his lap. "Are you kidding?"

Sakura pulled her face back in astonishment. "What can you possibly want to know about me?" she said. "Don't you know…"

"Everything?" He laughed. "Not even close."

He rubbed his masked chin, staring up at the ceiling. "Let's start with where you came from," he said. "I should hope it's a more comfortable beginning than inside a laboratory."

Grinning, Sakura said, "Barely. Konoha isn't exactly a luxurious planet."

"Konoha…" Kakashi scratched his neck again. "Doesn't ring any bells."

"That doesn't surprise me," Sakura deadpanned. "It's not a very important planet, but it was home."

"Tell me about it," he said softly.

She leaned back on her metal box, wrapping her arms around one knee. Her eyes searched the ceiling wistfully. "There were trees everywhere," she began. "It was a very leafy planet. That's where it got its name from, anyway. We used to climb them and look up at the stars…"

She wondered how to explain to him the feel of the bark beneath her fingernails, or how she kicked at stray branches and hoped the sound wouldn't wake her parents. Would he understand the longing she felt, gazing up at the vast cloak of star-spangled velvet and wishing she could soar through its inky depths? Had he ever wanted anything, as an android?

"When you were a child?" he asked. She noticed that his voice seemed restrained, but she couldn't tell what he was holding back.

"Yeah," she said without looking at him. "We would sneak out at night to look up and wonder what it would be like to get out there someday…"

"Well, you did," he said. Her gaze slid down to him, but his expression was inscrutable.

"Yeah," she said again. She heaved a heavy sigh, running a hand through her matted strands of pink hair. "Not quite what I expected, but yeah."

Neither of them said anything for a few minutes. Then Kakashi said tentatively, "What do you like to eat?"

Sakura blinked in surprise. "Eat? Hmm… What I _really _love is a nice sticky anko dumpling…" She ran her tongue along the seam of her lips, imagining the syrup coating her mouth as her tongue plunged into the warmth of the dumpling. Her eyes were closed, so she did not notice the way Kakashi's eyes followed her tongue's languid movements.

"Of course, the closest you can get to that around here is a lump of liquid sugar on a stale piece of toast," she said, snapping open her eyes. Kakashi's had already been politely relocated elsewhere. "I can't remember the last time I had decent food."

Kakashi looked deeply interested. "Does taste make that big of a difference?" he asked.

"Oh God yes," Sakura said, shaking her head ruefully. "But nothing tastes good in space. And we don't stop on many planets these days…"

Kakashi nodded. Sakura had already explained to him how they were treasure hunters, but right now they were more focused on running away from the ruthless Konan. Aside from ports like Anchor 3, they didn't leave their ship much.

That seemed to lead Kakashi's mind to a new topic. "What's it like listening to a language you don't understand?" he asked.

Sakura gawked at him. "You aren't saying you know _every _language, are you?"

He shrugged, which seemed to be a favorite response of his— strange, for an android.

"I'm not so good with local dialects, but I come equipped with most standard dictionaries!"

His tone dripped with an ironic imitation of a salesperson, and he held up his hands in mock celebration. Sakura giggled most uncharacteristically.

"I'm not sure how to explain it to you, then," she said. His hands dropped to his knees with a muffled sound. She always half-expected to hear a mechanical _clunk _whenever his body was touched. "It sounds like gibberish, but you can usually glean something from inflection and body language. Emotions tend to come across no matter what."

He was watching her with the interest that Tsunade gave to her _Spacegirl _centerfolds, which was to say, with unblinking attention. She could almost imagine the switchboard blinking where his brain would be, logging the information into his data chips.

She suppressed a shudder. If he noticed, he didn't give any indication. "What do you mean?" he asked.

Sakura bit her lip. How was she supposed to explain _that_? "Well… I guess…" She held up her hands in front of her, gazing unseeingly through the cracks between her gloved fingers. "When someone's sad, their whole demeanor just lessens, or... dampens. Yeah, dampens. But when they're happy, they light up, and you can see it in their eyes… Their eyes tell you how they're really feeling."

She lifted her eyes and met his intent stare. Her mint eyes glowed with ethereal color in the eerie room, wide and anxious, and she could see a struggle in his darker ones. It was as though he were trying to step onto a bridge he couldn't see.

"Sakura," he said, and her heart jumped at hearing her name. "Can I ask you… What is it like to dream?"

Her eyes softened. "Of course you can ask me," she said. A laugh escaped her. "That's an even harder one to answer, though. Your mind just gives you a weird mix of images, and they don't follow the rules of real life…"

"What sorts of images?" He was leaning forward where he sat, eager to understand.

Sakura considered, and both she and Kakashi were so quiet that the only sounds to be heard were the regular noises of the machines, hardly noticeable to them by now.

"Sometimes they're exaggerations of things that happened to you," she said slowly. "Or people you know, or things that you've been thinking about but haven't actually happened yet. Every now and then you get nightmares, but usually dreams are either nonsense or about good things…"

She trailed off, not knowing how else to explain. He had let his eyes wander towards the floor, which he was staring at as though it had offended him.

"Why?" she asked, looking at him quizzically. "When you charge up like that, what do you see?"

He blinked in surprise and fixed his gaze sharply on her, but before he could speak they were both startled by a voice from above.

"Sakura?" Shizune called. "Are you down there? Tsunade's been looking for you!"

"Coming!" Sakura jumped to her feet, narrowly avoiding tripping over a thick bunch of wires as she did so. "Sorry," she said, her eyebrows turned up in apology. "I've got to go."

He nodded in compliance, so she scurried back over to the ladder and scrambled up it. Kakashi watched her until the heel of her bottle green boot had kicked itself up, but it was a long while after that when he finally tore his mismatched eyes away from the rungs that she had clutched.


	2. Scarecrow

Scarecrow

* * *

><p>Kakashi turned away from the hatch and rubbed his forehead slowly. The mysterious pain was still beating a dull rhythm against his skull. He had felt pain before, but it had always had an obvious source like a wound. Never had he experienced chronic discomfort. The idea unsettled him— What was wrong with him now?<p>

Perhaps the answer could be solved with a simple diagnostic check. Although he had hoped that charging up would cure him of the ache, he thought there might be a chance that one of his systems was displaying an irregularity.

He encased his nose with steepled fingers as if he were covering a sneeze. Closing his eyes, he initiated a simple check of his bodily functions. He had a decent number of organic organs — lungs, muscles, diaphragm — but as he felt the tickling warmth of the diagnostic check sweeping through his body, no aberrations were detected. A jolt of suspense leapt in his chest as the check took a little longer to scan his head, but then it kept beeping serenely until the test concluded with a long, tapering whine.

His eyes snapped open. That had been quite disappointing. He had expected the diagnostic to tell him why his eye was red, or why his head was hurting, but either there was nothing wrong with him or something had fooled his systems.

_That's a comforting thought._ He sighed and massaged the ankle resting on his lap. The check had done nothing to relieve him of the pain in his head. If anything, the headache was worse.

Even beyond that, though, he felt… odd. He couldn't put his finger on it. Flexing them experimentally, he saw that his motor control seemed to be in order, so that wasn't the problem.

The issue didn't seem to be very physical— but then, he remembered how his pulse had inexplicably sped up when he saw that Sakura had been waiting for him after he charged up.

_That was just a side effect of charging up_, he snapped dismissively at himself.

_Okay, but how do you explain the weird feelings you got when she was talking?_

_ Easily. There are no feelings._

Yet Kakashi knew a little better than that. The Scarecrow models included advanced emotional sensors, making them particularly smooth diplomats; they were able to interpret nuances in mood when negotiating a treaty or decree. To aid their diplomatic functions and to generally make them a more appealing buy, they were also given the ability to produce their own emotional reactions. There were supposed to be limits, of course, although Kakashi had never tried to test them.

The warring thoughts in his head fell quiet, which he was grateful for due to his headache. He stared intently at the hatch where she had left. It was true that he hadn't felt himself when Sakura was answering his questions. He knew that he was capable of curiosity, and while he had certainly been burning with that, it felt different than what he was used to.

He mentally leafed through his catalogue of known emotions. Not surprise, anger, protection, amusement, caution, or guilt… None of them matched up with what had fluttered and sagged within him while Sakura's minty green eyes were focused on him.

Of course, there were emotions Kakashi was not built to feel. If she hadn't been ordered away, he might have asked Sakura what it was like to be happy or sad. He could certainly detect when happiness was lighting up her face; his breadth of abilities included recognition of beauty, after all. He thought he saw sadness, too, when she gazed out the window with what he could only label longing.

Longing was another thing he wondered if he felt. It was hard to name emotions that weren't programmed into him. Social skills had never really been his specialty, anyway.

A sudden weight wilted his shoulders, and he buried his face in his hands. He was an android— his brain was wired and his heart was made of metal. He had no business feeling those things, whatever they were. He was an android— he shouldn't have been capable of feelings that weren't part of his design. Sakura was a human being. Her life was short and her emotions were genuine, and he, with his indefinitely long life and emotional blueprint, could not and should not reach out to her. All he could guarantee her was disappointment.

He let out a labored sigh. A friend was a tantalizing prospect, but for Kakashi it was nothing but a dream. _Not even a dream_, he corrected himself. _Androids don't dream._

With a hardened expression he rose to his feet and moved to inspect one of the machines. He wanted to earn his keep, so he tapped through several screens and made sure that everything was in order. _Machines,_ he thought bitterly. _That's what I'm good at._

He was certain of one thing he had felt while listening to her, though. He was fascinated by the idea that once, Sakura had been younger than she was now. She was still very young, no more than twenty-five years old if Kakashi had to guess, but when she had mentioned climbing trees as a child, Kakashi had felt such a surge of emotion. The idea was completely alien to him. He knew more things than he did when he was fresh out of the lab, but he doubted he was capable of the sort of mental development Sakura would undergo. He was a genius, it was true— but he had been built that way. Sakura grew and would continue to grow long after Kakashi reached a plateau.

Unlike the mysterious sensation he felt around Sakura, Kakashi knew how to categorize this one. When he thought of her human life, in all of its evolution and beauty and brevity, he was certain that what he felt was called envy.

* * *

><p>Tsunade was waiting impatiently for her in the control room, sitting sideways in her chair with her legs crossed over the armrest.<p>

"Where the hell have you been?" she demanded.

"Helping out downstairs," Sakura said indifferently. She was tense, silently daring Tsunade to challenge her, but the older woman did not voice any objection, so Sakura sat down in the smaller chair to Tsunade's right.

"What have we got today?" she asked, tapping a few buttons to bring up the proper screens. Their technology was outdated, to put it politely, but Sakura knew all the ins and outs of their ancient system, which made it far from functionally obsolete.

Tsunade sucked loudly on her water bottle. Sakura tugged on the headset, fastening the earpiece on the right side so that she was receiving a constant stream from the hacked intergalactic communication feed. Of course, theirs was a hack of the general hack, which any space hacker worth their weight in moon dust could have broken into. Right now there was only static, but she twiddled a few knobs to try to bring something more useful into focus.

"See if you can pick up coordinates," Tsunade said, and she sounded like a broken hologram. That was always the first order she gave Sakura when they sat down for these sessions; first they had to see if they could catch any snippet of information on the whereabouts of Konan and her sapphire ship, _The Paper Crane_. Only when they had found something and adjusted or, more typically, given up searching after two hours would they then do their old job: treasure hunting.

_Tonton_'s crew had been in the business for several years now, ever since Sakura was sixteen. They had left behind Konoha in search of something greater, just as many of Sakura's old school friends had done. Shizune's mechanical know-how and Sakura's cunning were cemented together by Tsunade's bold leadership, and together they had formed a formidable force. They toed the line between adventurers and thieves, although they made a rule of not stealing from anyone who needed the loot.

When they had treasures to sell, they went to one of the many large black market ports scattered throughout the galaxy. They usually tried to spend their money on ship repairs first, although they had all been known for their discrepancies. With Tsunade it was usually breast implants, gambling, or booze; Sakura had a soft spot for dangerous weapons; and Shizune tended to purchase odd gadgets no one really needed. She was hard to catch on it, though, because no one understood what Shizune actually used for the ship and what she simply added to her haphazard junk collection.

Ever since they had intervened in the rebellion on the ice planet, however, Konan had been on their backs. It had been almost a year since that had happened, and Sakura longed for their old, carefree lifestyle. Gone were the days of planet hopping en route to some mysterious treasure and meeting a whole host of bizarre creatures and friends along the way. Now they lived a life of evasion and secrecy.

That was one of the reasons Kakashi's company was such a blessing to Sakura. They hadn't been able to make any new contacts for the past year because they couldn't risk giving themselves away. It was hard enough keeping _The Tonton _concealed without leaving obvious social footprints. Although Kakashi's appearance was still very mysterious, Sakura was thankful for it. He offered her the best conversation she had had in a long time; she loved Tsunade and Shizune, but after so much time cooped up together they didn't always have as many things to talk about. Kakashi, on the other hand, was unlike anyone Sakura had ever encountered— but at the same time, so human that she sometimes found herself forgetting he wasn't.

Her feelings about him were starting to confuse her— more than one sleepless night had been spent agonizing over him. _Stick to humans_, Tsunade had said, but when had a human man ever made her feel so comfortable? He felt more genuine and sincere than any "flesh-and-blood" man she had ever known. The way his eyes crinkled when he laughed, the caring and kindness in his voice, his thoughtful responses… the way his eyes bored into hers when they weren't saying anything at all… It was hard to believe that it was all merely a product of some fancy algorithms.

"Sakura!" Tsunade snapped. "Do we keep you here to work or to daydream?"

Sakura resisted the urge to glare and adjusted the headset, listening closely to the conversations buzzing in her ear. She usually had to sift through useless chatter between pilots and foreign dignitaries. Although they knew this was the channel Konan used most often, it was rare to find anything they could use to pin down her location.

An hour passed. Sakura continued to fiddle with the radio tuner while Tsunade pored over maps. Nothing useful crossed the airwaves, and Sakura finally turned down the volume so that the feed was only a slight buzz in her ears.

Tsunade looked at her, trying to conceal her disappointment. "Nothing?"

Sakura shook her head. Tsunade cursed and took a swig from her water bottle. They hadn't been able to afford any alcohol in some time now, and it put Tsunade in a sour mood.

"Great," she said, her voice thick with frustration. "Peachy."

"Hand me one of those maps, will you?"

Tsunade dispiritedly tossed her one of the paper maps she kept stashed beneath the control board. Sakura caught and unfurled it, brandishing it in front of her. It was backlit by the light from the screen behind it, which was still blipping with a constantly fluctuating line of radio waves.

She studied the star chart carefully despite having most of it memorized. "We could try aiming for the Akatsuki galaxy," she suggested. "It's a long way, but—"

"Are you kidding?" Tsunade spat. "We could get ourselves killed. That's a rough group of mercenaries that controls that whole area."

"Yeah, but how likely is Konan to go there?" Sakura pointed out.

"That would be playing right into her hands!" Tsunade brought her legs swinging down to the ground angrily. "She'd love to run us into such dangerous territory!"

"We've gotten through rougher crowds before," said Sakura peevishly.

"Yeah, but not with such _valuable cargo_."

Her voice was a low hiss, and her eyes flickered meaningfully behind them. Even though he was nowhere in sight, Sakura knew that Tsunade was referring to Kakashi.

It was true that more than all of the treasure they had ever stowed, Kakashi was nearly priceless. His appearance was so human, and his voice carried no monotonous rhythm or tinny pitch that was the dead giveaway for so many androids. They still had no idea how such an expensive model had fallen into their hands. Did they have a friend somewhere who felt inspired to send them a gift worth a hundred times its weight in gold? Or had someone been trying to get rid of him and dropped him off at the first bank they could find?

It was no use asking Kakashi. Tsunade had tried grilling him, hoping that his memory would come back to him as he warmed up from being deactivated, but as much as he wanted to help them, he hadn't gained any new insights. He had expressed confusion about the appearance of the scar on his eye, but he said that other than its change in color his eye had been operating normally.

"Fine," Sakura said. She folded over half the map to get a better look at a different portion. "We won't go there. But what about—"

She cut herself off with an ear-splitting scream.

Without warning, half a dozen figures had just materialized in the control room. Seven feet tall and holding three-foot-long guns, they sported slimy green skin and several tentacles besides their arms and legs. They had long trunklike noses that sucked in the air greedily and swung menacingly in the air along with the tentacles.

"SHIZUNE!" Tsunade bellowed, hoisting up a large blaster gun she kept next to the maps. "HIDE HIM!"

Sakura grabbed the nearest gun and fired the first shot. This seemed to snap the aliens out of the initial confusion that came with getting their bearings, and while the one Sakura had shot let out a bloodcurdling howl, the other five charged.

A forest green tentacle slapped Sakura on the side of the face as two aliens tried to overcome her. She felt its dripping suction cups padding incessantly at the side of her tank top, and with a roar of rage she picked a knife from her belt and sliced off the end of the tentacle.

Blue blood came spurting out, dribbling all over her clothes. The wounded alien grabbed her chin with one of his meaty green hands while the other sent one of his tentacles wrapping around one of her legs. She kicked hard at his uncovered groin with the other, and he yowled in pain while relinquishing his slimy grip on her thigh.

She lifted her gun hand and unflinchingly shot the remaining alien in the face. The laser sheared off his nose and left a melting green hole in its wake; the alien staggered backwards, shooting off his gun thoughtlessly. It blasted a sizzling hole in the carpet but seemed to be set too low to cause real damage.

_They aren't trying to kill us_, Sakura thought as she set of a round of shots on the alien she had kicked between the legs. Tsunade was doing the same to the other three aliens several feet away, and Sakura knew they were thinking the same thing: The aliens were here for Kakashi, but they didn't seem to mind capturing a few scantily clad women on the way.

A familiar battle cry signaled to Sakura that Shizune had joined the fray. Sakura couldn't spare a look because the two damaged aliens were advancing on her again, but she prayed it meant that Shizune had safely secured Kakashi.

The mechanic had a few special weapons up her sleeve, and she was currently launching poisoned darts at the two nearest aliens. One of them caught the dart between his hulking teeth and spit it out before it could touch his tongue, advancing on Shizune with a screeching wail. He lifted her up around the waist with a bulging green arm and used his tentacles to caress her cheek and tug at her clothes. She reared her head and bit down hard on the prying suction cups, wrenching one off with a terrible ripping sound. She spat it in the alien's face, but he only kept rubbing the damaged tentacle on her, smearing a sickening mixture of sticky juice with his gurgling blue blood on her pale cheek.

Sakura came bounding to her rescue, ducking out the way of one of the alien's lunging swipes and kicking Shizune's attacker in the hip. He stumbled and dropped Shizune, who landed hard on her backside but had leapt to her feet in no time.

"Thanks," she panted, pointing her laser gun at the alien and blasting a hole into his neck.

Meanwhile, Kakashi had been crammed into Sakura's quarters. Shizune had locked him in against his protests that he could help, and he was currently slamming his weight against the door to no avail. He had participated in combat before, but the captain had ordered him barricaded here.

He slumped against the door, thudding his forehead on it in frustration. While the sounds of the battles continued to torture him through the securely locked door, his mind was whirring rapidly.

It didn't add up. How could those aliens have teleported to the ship so easily? It was very difficult to pinpoint an exact location like that, especially on a moving vessel that was as small as _The Tonton_. Without exact coordinates, it was damn near impossible.

His eyes flickered across the metal door unseeingly. His headache was worse than ever. How could they have done it? How could they have picked up the exact coordinates of such a small and fast-moving vehicle?

His head pounded. That too was so unusual; he never got headaches.

He never got headaches…

It hit him with a sickening flash. _He _had led the attackers here. And even as he thought it, he recognized that the pain seemed to be concentrated in his new eye.

He firmly shut his old one and let the red one take over. He had tried this before, but all that he had noticed was that it seemed to increase the pain in his head. Now he thought that perhaps he could hear more than just a mindless pounding— indeed, a code…

Systematically, he shut down less important functions so that he could focus all of his freshly charged energy on the anomaly. It was complex, but cryptography was one of his many talents. His mechanisms whirred as they broke down the cryptic beeps and tones, and in several minutes a detailed message was unraveling before him.

They were numbers, repeated over and over again and constantly adjusted. As soon as he had figured all of them out, he realized that they were coordinates. All of this time, his eye had been giving these attackers all of the information they needed to apprehend _The Tonton_ and her crew.

His fingers curled into fists. It was his body— there had to be a way to stop it. He shut down a few more systems — personal preferences, sense of humor — so that he could tap into the more mechanical part of himself. He urged his mind to work as quickly as it could, for every moment wasted was another that the crew was in danger, but it was still a few minutes before he tracked down the source of the code.

There were security measures in place he had to overcome by force, but he wasn't the most modern android in the Five Great Galaxies for nothing. Whoever had set this code in place had underestimated his abilities, and in under a minute he had disabled the safety blocks and was able to delve into the code.

His body stood still while he underwent this, motionless as it had been while he was charging just a few hours before. There was no light in Sakura's quarters but the flickering coming from his red eye as he reprogrammed its message.

It was a gamble, but he thought that there must be some sort of microchip receiving the message his eye had been transmitting. If he were lucky it would be embedded within the aliens' own brains, but at the very least if he could disrupt the receiver in their ship he could stop more from being sent.

This was the most complicated thing he had done yet; he usually didn't reprogram himself on the spur of the moment, but there was no choice. He had to do anything in his power to help Sakura and the rest of the crew.

With that thought empowering him, he sped through the rest of the recoding process. Suddenly, the pattern of beeps changed. The beeps were more irregular and ranged in pitch, creating a chaotic cacophony inside Kakashi's head. His own head felt like it might explode with the racket, but he could only hope that it would _really _blow up another machine…

Out in the control room, things had been looking bleak. Five more aliens had been beamed into existence and were wreaking havoc on the three defenders. What little there had been of Tsunade's shirt to begin with was now ripped into shreds, leaving her chest exposed to the slimy tentacles of the alien monsters. Shizune was unsuccessfully trying to wrench two aliens away from her captain as another pair ripped her overalls along the seams.

Sakura's suspenders had been pulled down and there were currently four tentacles fondling her breasts through the skimpy material of her tank top, which was wet from all of the blood and slime she had spilled in her crusade against the aliens. A rough alien hand had her bottom in a vice grip and was renting a hole in her shorts with one long, gnarled fingernail.

She tried to kick them away, but the efforts were futile; one alien lifted her shirt with a flick of his wrist and brought his slobbering mouth down on one of her nipples—

And then, with her indignant scream fresh in the air, everything stopped.

The aliens apprehending her pulled away with deafening shrieks, clutching their heads in pain. The ones grabbing at her crewmates did the same. A few tripped backwards over the mottled bodies of their fallen comrades and fell to the ground, writhing with pain and digging their fingers into the sides of their slimy bald heads.

Tsunade shot one in the chest, sending droplets of slime and blue blood flying everywhere. For a second, it seemed as if she had impossibly shot every single one of them in the heads, too, but then Sakura realized they were exploding of their own accord.

Alien detritus splattered all over the control room. Sakura dropped to her knees and covered her head with her arms, and she could feel the warm goo falling on her skin like slimy rain. The wretched screams of the aliens had stopped, leaving only the sounds of the urgently beeping machines and dripping slime.

Cautiously, she lifted her head up. The control room was filthy with the dead bodies of the aliens; the remnants of guns they had snapped in half; the torn remains of clothing; and broken equipment. Steaming holes had been blasted into the carpet, and some were deeper from when the aliens had gotten more aggressive. A thick, jagged scratch ran down an entire wall, exposing sparking wires beneath. The room was bathed in the flashing red lights of the alarm.

Sakura scrambled over to the far wall, thrusting her whole body against the door opener. The doors were barely opening and she was already squeezing through them, running to her quarters. They were the only closed doors, so she knew Kakashi must be in there.

She pounded her fist on the opening pad and the doors slid open with a _whoosh_. She outstretched her arms in the nick of time to catch Kakashi, who had thudded heavily against her.

"Kakashi!" she exclaimed. For a terrible moment she thought that whatever had killed the aliens had gotten him too, but he stirred against her bare chest.

"Sakura…" he moaned. She pushed him upright, deftly tugging down her tank top as she did so.

"Kakashi, can you hear me?" she urged. His eyelids were fluttering. She shook him, trying to snap him out of his stupor. "Kakashi!"

It worked. His eyes flew open, and she saw with a frightened lurch of her stomach that the red one was spinning. She watched its manic movement for a few seconds before wrenching her gaze back onto Kakashi.

"What happened?" he asked, sounding dazed. "Where are the aliens?"

"Dead," she panted. "All dead. Their heads exploded."

Triumph flashed in Kakashi's regular eye. "It worked," he muttered. He swayed slightly on the spot, but her firm grip on his biceps kept him standing.

"Worked?" she asked quickly. "What worked? Kakashi, you didn't do—"

"I did," he croaked. He tapped his head with two trembling fingers. "I can explain…"

The sound of hurried footsteps made Sakura turn around; she saw Shizune and Tsunade running towards them, both looking worse for wear. Shizune had a bleeding scratch on her face and the tattered rags still clinging to Tsunade's shoulders had given up all pretense of being a shirt; her breasts swung wildly as she jogged over to Sakura and Kakashi.

"What happened?" Tsunade demanded, echoing Kakashi's earlier question. Her eyes snapped to him, and her face twisted in revulsion at the sight of his still spinning red eye. "What the hell is wrong with him?"

"The aliens," he said. His iris slowed until it was cushioning his pupil motionlessly. Something in his eyes seemed to rev up, and he spoke more clearly. "They were receiving messages from a foreign mechanism in my eye, so I recoded the message and made it overload the microchips embedded in their brains."

No one said anything for several long moments. Then—

"Bastard!" Tsunade screeched, and she lunged forward to slap him across the face. He did not retaliate, looking blankly in the direction she had sent his cheek. Sakura stepped back in shock, releasing her grip on his arms.

"Tsunade!" she cried, but her captain cut her off.

"A trap!" she roared. "From the very beginning! I should have scrapped you the moment I found you in our vault, you worthless piece of metal!"

"Tsunade, he saved our lives!" Sakura interjected heatedly. "If it weren't for him—"

"The aliens never would have showed up," Shizune said coolly. Sakura shot her a furious glare.

"That's right," Tsunade said savagely. "This tinpot son of a bitch led them straight to us."

"Tsunade—"

"He's not denying it, is he?"

Sakura looked helplessly at Kakashi. He had not moved since Tsunade had slapped him, but his eyes were dark with what Sakura could only call guilt.

"He didn't mean to," she snapped, turning her glare on Tsunade. "He couldn't—"

"I don't care!" Tsunade had raised her voice again, and her wrath was a terrible thing to behold. Sakura shrank back instinctively from her terrible bellow. "We're rerouting to the nearest landing field and then we'll thrown him in the first trash compactor we can find!"

She turned on her heel and stomped away, each step leaving an angry dent in the metal floor from her high-heeled boots. Shizune followed without glancing back at Sakura again. Sakura was shaking, but she stood her ground, turning slowly back to the android standing across from her.

He blinked and then looked down at her. "You should go and help the others," he said tonelessly. "It must be a mess. I'll be downstairs checking the ship's wiring."

Before she could protest, he moved swiftly past her, disappearing down the hatch in the floor. He slammed the top shut behind him. Sakura ran over there and bent down, running her fingers along the grooves in the side and trying to lift, but he seemed to be holding it firmly shut.

"Bastard!" she shouted, tears fighting at the corners of her eyes. She released the hatch cover and ran to join her crewmembers in the control room.

Shizune was inspecting the damaged wall while Tsunade was ransacking the aliens' corpses for their valuables.

"Mercenaries." She threw a badge taken from one's weapons holster onto a patch of carpet stained with alien blood. "Standard fare. No way to track them down."

"It's not as if we don't know who sent them," Shizune snapped. She didn't turn around to look at them; if she had, she would have not been moved by the fire burning in Sakura's face. "Who do we know who would send us an android that can tell her minions our exact location?"

"And in the middle of space, where there were no witnesses," Tsunade said darkly. She spat on the corpse of the alien she had just robbed and moved on to the one lying next to him, ripping his holster off his waist and shaking its contents onto her lap.

Tugging up one of her fallen suspenders, Sakura joined them in the cleanup. Her mind was numb with anger and residual fear, and she tried not to think about Kakashi. She picked her way across the room, retrieving the broken pieces of the guns the aliens had dismantled. The aliens' guns were mostly intact, and the crew would either sell them or add them to their arsenal.

When Tsunade had finished amassing anything of value from the aliens, she enlisted Sakura's help in hauling them towards the waste dispenser. They exchanged sparse words and did not discuss the row still steaming in both of their minds. Instead they worked together to lift the slimy corpses and carry them down the narrow hallway, leading them to the very back of the ship where they disposed of all waste.

They continued this for every corpse, and Sakura only consoled herself by imagining the blissful shower she would take afterwards. Of course, her insubordination had surely earned her last access to the washroom, but as the youngest that lot usually fell to her anyway.

The next task that awaited them was cleaning up all of the blood and slime leftover from the battle. Shizune had already begun, and while Tsunade bent over to help her, Sakura ducked away discretely.

Once she was out of their earshot, she hurried to the hatch in the floor. As she had predicted, Kakashi was not still hanging on, so she had no problem opening it.

She scrambled down the ladder, landing on the floor with a _squelch _of her slimy boot against the rivers of cables. She had the presence of mind to pull the hatch shut as she fell.

Kakashi was bent over one of the engines in the back, pecking something into the keyboard there. Sakura hurried over to him, trying not to trip over the uneven wired ground.

He did not look up as she approached. She couldn't see his face beneath the ridiculous mask he still insisted on wearing, but if his eyes were any indication he was feeling rotten.

"Kakashi," she said softly. He flinched at the sound of his name.

"Scarecrow," he corrected. "I led those disgusting things to you like a stuffed straw dummy draws carrion crows."

His voice was thick with self-loathing. Sakura frowned, unaccustomed to hearing such a tone from an artificial life form. Hell, many humans she knew weren't even capable of such remorse.

She took another step towards him. He still wasn't looking at her. "You didn't know," she said gently. "It wasn't your fault."

"That doesn't matter," he said harshly. He jammed his thumb against a key with unnecessary force. "I endangered all of you. You would have been better off selling me than keeping me. Those aliens could have really hurt you…"

He cut off his trembling voice by clamping his lips shut as if he were going to choke up. Sakura sidestepped the large engine and put her hand on his arm in comfort.

"I don't blame you," she said. Her voice was barely audible over the rumble of the engine, but he heard her. She could see it in his hooded eyes.

Neither of them spoke for several minutes. She left her hand on his arm. Then quietly, he began to speak.

"When I was charging up earlier," he said, "I got images of you." He swallowed. Sakura's grip tightened around his arm.

"Me…?" she whispered.

He nodded wretchedly. "I think I might have been… dreaming."

A stunned beat of silence passed. Then, as if it were the most natural thing in the world, Sakura wrapped her arms tightly around him. He had been slightly turned away from her so the hug came from the side, and Sakura buried her face in his shoulder. She squeezed him affectionately, swaying a little from the force of her hug.

"That's…" she began to say, but she was distracted by the sound of the hatch being jerked open. A flood of light shot down from the hole in the ceiling. Before Sakura could register what was happening, Shizune had scrambled down the ladder and was standing several yards from Sakura, her gun pointed straight at them.

"Don't move," she said quietly. She approached them slowly, stepping expertly over every bump in the cables with practiced ease.

"What are you doing?" Sakura demanded, much more loudly. "Put that gun down!"

"Captain's orders," Shizune breathed. By now she had reached the engine and stopped. Only the oblivious machines made any noise, ticking away the tightly wound seconds. Sakura was very aware of the arms still wrapped around Kakashi's side, but the sight of the gun barrel glued her to him.

Shizune huffed impatiently. "Move, Sakura," she said forcefully. "It's set to stun. I'm not afraid to use it on you."

"Sakura…"

She ignored Kakashi's voice in her ear. "What are you going to do with him?" Her voice rang in the eerily still room. "I won't let you kill him!"

"You can't kill something that was never alive," Shizune spat. "We're deactivating him and you can't change that."

Sakura bristled, her eyes brimming with tears. "Shoot me then!" she shrilled. The hysteria in her voice made Shizune flinch, but she did not lower the gun.

Just as Sakura squeezed the unresisting Kakashi as tightly as she could, Shizune pulled the trigger. A beam of violet light hit Sakura in the neck, sending a painful shock through her entire body. Unable to control her limbs, she released Kakashi and fell dully to the floor. The last thing she remembered was Kakashi's voice, distantly crying "Sakura!" as if through a dense bubble of water…

* * *

><p>When Sakura woke up, her body ached. Her sore muscles protested torturously as she forced herself into a sitting position.<p>

She was in her quarters. The bright fluorescent light buzzing overhead burned her eyes, intensifying the headache pounding beneath her forehead. Groaning, she rubbed her eyelids and glanced down to see what shape she was in.

No one had bothered to wash her, or even change her out of the clothes she had been left in. Wondering how long she had been lying here, she stumbled out of bed and pushed the pad next to the door. When it opened, she walked gingerly out into the brightly lit hallway.

The pungent stink lingering in the air told her they hadn't finished cleaning yet, and she probably hadn't been out cold for long. As she stood there, the memories of what had happened before she passed out began to resurface, until one thought broke clearly through the fog—

"Kakashi!" she gasped. In spite of her aching body she ran over to the main control room. The doors were open, and both Tsunade and Shizune were scrubbing at the floor with indigo washcloths. Both of them, she noticed, had changed into fresh clothing.

Tsunade's gaze darted up at her arrival. She scowled.

"Nice of you to finally join us," she said scathingly. "Why don't you get on your knees and start helping us?"

Sakura didn't move. "Where is he?" she demanded. "What did you do with him?"

"I told you," Shizune said. She kept her eyes fixed on the stained carpet she was cleaning. "We deactivated him."

Sakura exhaled a vehement curse. "How could you do that?" she yelled, stamping her foot on the ground in distress. "He saved our lives—"

Tsunade's honey-colored eyes burned unsympathetically. "How many times do I have to tell you?" she growled. "He was the reason we were in danger in the first place!"

"And how many times do I have to tell _you_?" Sakura seethed. "He didn't know, and as soon as he figured it out he saved both of your asses!"

Tsunade sat up, said ass resting on her heels, and brandished the wet rag in her hands like a weapon. "Now you listen here, Sakura," she said. "And you listen well. Androids have electronic brains that tell them how to act and what to think. No matter how normal they might appear on the outside, _they are machines_. You can't trust them."

"So what if his switchboard tells him what to do?" Sakura fired back. "Don't our organic brains do the same thing? The impulses from the neurons control—"

"Souls, dammit!" Tsunade threw the towel furiously to the floor. "They don't have souls, and if you're not careful they'll try to steal yours from you!"

Sakura stood staring at her, mouth slack with shock. Tsunade was panting heavily, her cheeks flushed with passionate rage.

"Souls?" Sakura repeated. "What the hell do you mean?"

Shizune and Tsunade exchanged significant looks. Tsunade swore under her breath before straightening up, brushing off her shorts as she addressed Sakura. She took a deep, bracing breath before parting her heavily made up lips to speak.

"I'm telling you this so that you can get it through your thick skull that androids aren't to be trusted," she said in a low voice. Shizune had abandoned her work and was glaring at Tsunade's feet.

"I knew an android once. Was even friends with one. Name of Orochimaru. He was like this one," she said, jerking her head behind her as if Kakashi were standing there. "Could hardly tell he was an android by talking to him, although he had metal grooves on his face. He liked to color them in purple and pretend they were tattoos."

Her voice broke for a moment, but she collected herself and continued to explain. Sakura held her tongue, trying to reign in her anger long enough to let Tsunade finish her story.

"Anyway, he and I knew another friend of mine… Jiraiya. Big, broad sort of guy… very tough." She blew out a harsh breath of air. "We flew around a little, back when I first left Konoha. At first it was just Jiraiya and I, but then we met up with Orochimaru, and…"

Uncharacteristically, she began to toy with the hem of her shirt, glaring moodily to the side. "I made a mistake. I thought he was more than he was, Sakura. I thought he was just like a human. We got… involved." She coughed. Sakura wondered how deeply she meant, but she didn't dare interrupt to ask such an impudent question.

In her mounting agitation, Tsunade accidentally tore off some of her hemline with a sharp jerk of her long painted nail. "It cost us," she said bitterly. "We were childhood friends, Jiraiya and I. He always had the hots for me, but I kept brushing him off … so it was a big shock when he found us together one day in my quarters. He got pissed and tried to pull Orochimaru away from me when Orochimaru rose up from the bed and started— started—" She struggled to find the words. Shizune's eyes were boring unblinkingly into Tsunade's ankle. "His eyes went all funny, and his tongue came out, longer than it should have been, and he sh-shoved it down Jiraiya's throat, and Jiraiya's eyes started getting so damn pale…"

Her voice was shaking, and she shuddered at the memory. "I didn't know what to do. I only had half my clothes on but I chopped that metal bastard in the neck with my bare hands." She rubbed her wrist as if remembering the impact. "It startled him but didn't stop him, so I bit down on his neck and tore out his circuitry."

Sakura felt cold. She tried not to imagine Kakashi meeting the same fate, his face going blank as exposed copper wires sparked in his neck…

Tsunade dragged her eyes back to meet Sakura's. Sakura was stiff and wide-eyed, but Tsunade looked more determined than ever.

"We did some research and figured it out. Orochimaru was a prototype, the result of some very experimental technology. He was trying to strangle Jiraiya's life essence out of him and steal it, and he was built to try to incorporate him into his own body. We've no idea if it would have worked, but Jiraiya would have died in the attempt."

Sakura gaped soundlessly for several seconds before finally grasping her voice. "But that's— that's absurd," she sputtered. "Souls… you don't even know if…"

"If they exist?" Tsunade supplied snappishly. "I know that after Orochimaru attacked him, Jiraiya could get a little slow in answering people, and he didn't always seem as animated as he used to be. This was a boisterous man we are talking about, but sometimes his eyes would just glaze over for a couple minutes and I _knew _it was because of what that son of a bitch android did to him!"

She didn't give Sakura a chance to slip a word in edgewise, plowing forward in an angry tirade. "Your precious android Kakashi didn't try to stop us, you know. As soon as you were out he told Shizune to do whatever the hell was best, so she jabbed him in the chest with her gun and he went out like a light. _He _knows that he should stay the hell away from humans like us. Now you just need to follow his goddamn example and direct me to the nearest auction zone so we can sell his titanium ass for more than an entire spaceport's worth."

She jerked her thumb over her shoulder, indicating the navigation panel up at the front window. Sakura didn't move a muscle.

"That's too dangerous," she said through gritted teeth. "That'll put us right out in the open, it'll make us sitting ducks for Konan—"

"The android already took care of that for us!" Tsunade shouted. "If we don't get rid of him now he could do it again! If you gave a shit about your own life you would get up to that navigation panel and start working."

Still Sakura did not obey. Her eyes were narrowed, boldly keeping even with Tsunade's.

"I said, move," Tsunade growled. A vein in her temple throbbed dangerously.

Sakura's face twisted in contempt and she spat at the ground where Tsunade stood. Shizune gasped in horror, her eyes finally snapping up to glare at Sakura in disbelief. Tsunade's nostrils flared, but she lowered her hand.

"Fine," she said coolly. "Fine. If you're not going to help me, then you can get the hell out of my sight until we can dump you on the nearest spaceport, you ungrateful little bitch."

She turned on her heel, which squelched in the slime still clinging to the orange shag carpet, and stormed over to the captain's chair. Before she had even hit the seat, Sakura had swept out of the control room. The sliding doors slammed shut behind her, leaving her alone in the narrow hallway.

Her ears were ringing with barely controlled anger. Tsunade's story was sad, but Kakashi would never do something like that android Orochimaru had done. Sakura just knew it. There was such a tenderness in his eyes that was no less real than that of a human man. Kakashi was her friend. He was more than a friend…

The image of Kakashi's soft, mismatched eyes swimming through her mind steeled her resolve. They weren't going to sell him on the auction block if she had anything to do with it. She knew what she had to do.


	3. Soul

Soul

* * *

><p><em>The Paper Crane<em> moved smoothly through space. Its sleek blue design, folded like a titanium origami bird, concealed many powerful weapons. Lights burned through the thickly sealed windows. The brightest came from the bridge, where the captain was seated regally in her chair.

"Bastard," she hissed, drumming her long blue fingernails along the steel armrest. Her voice was as cold as her icy eyes. "Who would have thought my android would go astray…"

She snapped her fingers, and a servant immediately flew to her side.

"Yes, Mistress?" he croaked. He was only three feet tall and had papery white skin, making his red eyes bulge all the more prominently from his forehead. All five of them quivered fearfully as he regarded the captain.

"Have we still got their coordinates tracked?" she asked him. He nodded quickly.

"Y-yes, Mistress!" he said. "They were being recorded, your Excellency… even before the android blew up the receptor."

"If we move quickly, we can still have them followed." She pointed at a man sitting in front of her to the right, bent over a panel of controls. "You heard me," she said. "Track them."

A loud whirring noise resounded through the entire ship as the engines revved up and, with a sudden burst of energy, propelled _The Paper Crane_ forward through space.

The acceleration drowned out the voices of two workers, huddled outside the great sliding doors of the bridge. Clad in red shirts, they were both humanoids but with bubbling horns poking out of their foreheads, marking them as members of an alien race subjugated by Konan's tyrannical rule.

"I wish she'd just give it up," one of them muttered. "The rebellion didn't even work, what's she wasting her time chasing after these people for?"

"I'm sure she wants them for Pain's harem," the second one said. "Make up for when she messed up by letting them slip into the palace in the first place."

The first rolled his eyes. "He's got enough wenches in there to last him a lifetime," he said dismissively. "These girls are pretty, but it's still a waste of time."

"Hey, I'm not complaining," the other said, even more quietly. "The more time she spends away from home, the bigger chance the underground movement has to rise up again…"

Konan's eyes flashed where she was sitting in the bridge, draped in her chair as if it were a throne. She stood up abruptly. Her pale periwinkle gown flowed around her ankles as she strode out of the bridge.

The sliding doors opened promptlessly for her, revealing the two red-shirted workers cowering behind them.

"Mutineers," she said softly. Their eyes widened in horror as she raised her black laser gun. "Plotting against me as if I don't have the whole ship wired." They didn't know it, but a slim white earpiece was hidden beneath her indigo hair. It beeped faintly in her ear as Konan pointed the gun straight at one of the men's hearts.

"P-please, Captain," he pleaded, his whole body shaking. "We didn't—"

Konan didn't let him finish. She had pulled the trigger before he could even think of an excuse, blasting a hole cleanly through his chest. He fell over backwards with a dull thud on the pristine carpeted floor.

The other one was killed just as quickly. Konan brought the tip of her gun to her lips, kissing it as she did after every kill. She thought it was a graceful way to send off her enemies into whatever oblivion awaited them.

"Captain!" one of the women in the bridge called, unaware of what Konan had just done. "We've got their coordinates tracked!"

Konan returned to the bridge, the doors sliding closed as quickly as they opened, hiding the corpses of the two workers. "Where are they going?" she asked, sitting back down in the large chair at the center of the window.

The woman tapped a few spots on the touch screen display, bringing up a map covered in blinking red dots. "They're heading for Port Selkin," she answered.

Konan's eyes narrowed in thought. "Port Selkin?" she repeated silkily. "Let's see… June… They've got an auction coming up, don't they?" A small smile tugged at her lips. _No doubt trying to sell off the android_, she deduced. _How obvious… It's as if they _want_ me to come and find them. Well, perhaps they've come around… realized that life in a harem wouldn't be so bad, the sluts…_

She cleared her throat and spoke loudly so that the crew could all hear. "Put us on course to Port Selkin," she ordered, "but be careful not to overtake them. They blew up the mercenaries, so now it's our turn…"

A hard smile cutting across her face, Konan sat back and let the ship guide her to them.

* * *

><p>Sakura was lying on her bed in total darkness, staring blankly up at the wall. She had spent at least a day in here, only leaving to use the bathroom and sneak food when she knew that neither of the others was awake.<p>

Kakashi was locked up in Tsunade's quarters where Sakura couldn't get to him. She wished she could be with him. Objectively speaking it wouldn't have mattered; when he was deactivated he was completely unaware of the world around him. Sakura didn't care, though, and would have gladly sat curled against his motionless form to keep him company.

Even though she was the one who was going to be kicked out for insubordination, she felt that Tsunade and Shizune were the ones who had betrayed their crew— for Kakashi had become an important part of their crew, even in the short time he had been there. Sakura didn't want to associate with people who would throw out an innocent person, a friend…

_But they never considered him a friend_, Sakura thought angrily. _He always followed their orders and did whatever he could to help, but they've been prejudiced against him from the beginning. He can't help being an android…_

As the prospect of losing him became more real, Sakura found herself caring less and less about what he was made of. She had been with men before, but nothing more than a distant affection had ever transcended their shallow, sexual relationships. She had never felt this sort of connection with any man, human or not, and yet the most they had ever done was hug.

Anger bubbled hotly within her. _They can't sell him off like this, not like he's some dress that went out of fashion._ Her fists curled on top of the flimsy blanket. _I won't let them._

She remained in her quarters until she could sense by the motion of the ship that they were slowing down. She was insulated from any sounds in the control room, but she thought they must have reached Port Selkin. Sure enough, the next half hour yielded the slow maneuvering it required to park in a crowded spaceport. Sakura spent the time packing her clothes and gun collection.

When the ship stopped moving, she heard a great scraping noise outside her quarters.

"Damn!" she heard Tsunade say. Sakura sat up, listening hopefully for any sign that the operation was going wrong, but to her disappointment Tsunade only said, "The damn corners of the box caught on the hatch…" She heard Tsunade kick the hatch shut and continue dragging something along the floor.

When the noise had moved past her quarters, the doors shot open with a _whoosh_. Shizune was standing there, grim-faced. Her dark goggles hid her eyes, but Sakura was sure she was averting them. "Come on," she said gruffly. Sakura followed her out, pulling her two suitcases behind her and hoisting her heavy rucksack onto her shoulders. They were kicking her off the ship, so she needed to take everything with her.

When she got to the gangplank, she felt a swoop of sadness in her chest at the idea of leaving; her throat constricted with the sense of loss, but she suppressed it with a snarl. _They_ were abandoning _her_. _She _had done nothing wrong. She had to remember that.

Still, it was with a heavy heart that she descended the crude metal walkway, all of her belongings rolling along behind her. She squinted against the bright lights of Port Selkin. This was where she would start over… But if everything went according to plan, she wouldn't be alone.

Tsunade was waiting for the two of them at the bottom. Her high-heeled boot, the color of a fresh banana, was resting atop a long cardboard box. Thick tape circled the middle, with the word FRAGILE scrawled across in black marker.

_Kakashi_, Sakura thought, but she said nothing. When she and Shizune had reached the floor of the spaceport, Tsunade addressed Sakura without looking at her.

"You're to wait here with Shizune while I get it registered," she said. Sakura's anger burned at hearing Kakashi referred to as "it", but again, she said nothing. "She'll keep an eye on you so that you don't interfere."

A gangly alien with skin the color of a lemon that had been out in the sun too long walked over to them, pushing a rusty orange dolly. "Registering an item for auction?" he gargled, his two tongues moving in unison as he spoke.

"That's this thing," Tsunade said, nudging the box with the pointed toe of her boot. Together, she and the alien loaded Kakashi onto the dolly, and Tsunade followed the alien as he rolled the cart away.

Sakura watched them go, following their track carefully with her eyes. She had never been on Port Selkin before, but the set-up of most auction ports was similar. Port Selkin was particularly large, though, and Sakura felt apprehensive as she looked at the many ships pulling into port. A few of them were blue, but none of them was _The Paper Crane._ Air traffic controllers waved long neon sticks, but they were tiny pinpricks of color against the gleaming (and some not-so-gleaming) sides of the ships. It had been a long time since Sakura had seen so many ships in one place, and she was a little overwhelmed by the sheer number of gargantuan vessels. They certainly dwarfed the diminutive _Tonton_.

A surge of affection for the ship that had taken her through so many experiences mounted powerfully within her, but she bit her lip and stifled it. There were hundreds of ships in Port Selkin alone— she would find a new one.

Shizune was not speaking to her. Her head turned resolutely away, she was instead watching idly as bizarre people shuffled, loped, and trotted past them. Some of them were from species Sakura recognized from their travels, but most were completely foreign to her. Fuchsia giants dispersed the crowds wherever they swung down their enormous feet. Their gnarled toes were the size of a man's head. The people who ran from them were often so small that their heads would have gone no higher than Sakura's knee; their high-pitched squeals could be heard as they hurried to safety, their yellow tails fluttering behind them. Groups of pale blue females huddled around in the shadows, passing between them a long green pipe that emitted faint sparks when they sucked on it with their orange lips.

Announcements blared throughout the entire port: Advertisements for navigation systems and flashy accessories rebounded off the silver walls and echoed in the great dome high above their heads. Vendors whizzed around on miniature hovercraft, trying to cajole indifferent passerby into buying their products.

"Shizune," Sakura said suddenly. The older woman flinched and turned more towards Sakura but couldn't bring herself to look at her. "I'm going over there to buy some food. I'm starving."

She started walking away, but Shizune's voice predictably stopped her.

"Wait!" she called. "Tsunade said—"

"Yeah, well, Tsunade isn't my captain anymore," Sakura shot back with a scowl. "You can follow me if you want. I don't care."

Sakura wound through the swelling crowds; the auction was drawing near, and people were converging excitedly. She had to elbow her way past a particularly ornery cluster of squawking lavender aliens who looked something like cactus plants. Even though she didn't look back, she knew that Shizune was following her to best of her ability. Sakura tried her best to get lost between groups, but Shizune was persistent. It didn't help that Sakura was an easy target with all of her luggage.

Deciding she needed to try a new tactic, Sakura bought a food she didn't recognize from the nearest vendor and stopped walking, waiting for Shizune to catch up.

"Shizune," she said again. She let her eyes flicker to Shizune and then flash dramatically away, staring down at her green boots.

"What," Shizune replied warily.

The crowd moved noisily around them. "We… We need to talk," Sakura said quietly, so that Shizune could barely hear.

Shizune stiffened. Her determined apathy faltered a little in the face of Sakura's vulnerable tone.

"T-talk?" she stammered.

Sakura nodded, her eyes still glued to her feet.

Shizune swung back and forth nervously on the balls of her feet. "Well, then… talk."

Grimy pink bangs flew back and forth as Sakura fervently shook her head. "Not here," she whispered. "T-too many people…"

She sniffled and rubbed her nose on the back of her glove. Shizune stood frozen in indecision at this rather pathetic display; the last thing she had expected Sakura to do in a situation like this was cry. She couldn't remember the last time she had seen her younger friend cry…

Shizune swallowed heavily, her conflicting emotions battling. When it came down to it, she didn't want to lose Sakura, especially not over something Konan had orchestrated. She could only hope that Sakura too valued their friendship more than an android she had not even known for very long.

"Okay," she said softly. "Let's go to the bathroom."

She led the way back through the horde of eager auction-goers. Sakura trailed along behind her, trying to exude sheepishness in every motion.

Sakura was an emotional girl, but that didn't mean she couldn't manipulate her own emotions when she wanted to— far from it. It stung her to treat Shizune this way, but even more than how Shizune had decided to treat Kakashi, she hadn't stuck up for Sakura against Tsunade. Such a steep violation of their friendship was not something Sakura could forgive easily. If only Shizune had valued their friendship more than her feelings about the android whom she hadn't even given a chance…

They squeezed past swarms of colorful aliens (one of whom Sakura could have sworn she saw puking up a cascade of rainbow pellets) into a dingy bathroom in a disused corner of the port. A single strip of fluorescent lights flickered overhead, casting an uneven light on the white tile floors. The ceiling was chipped in a few places, with a long blue wire curling down from a particularly significant crack.

Shizune leaned against a sink. She pushed up her goggles, smiling cautiously at Sakura. The brightness in her eyes, shining through the circles of dust in the outline of the goggles, nearly made Sakura forgo her plan, but then she thought of Kakashi looking at her with equal tenderness. Resolve crackled through her veins and she drew her gun, pointing it at Shizune's chest.

"I'm sorry," she said, and then she pulled the trigger.

Stunned by the low blast of the laser, Shizune slumped backwards against the sink. Fighting back the hot sting of tears, Sakura turned and ran out of the bathroom as fast as she could with her suitcases tumbling along behind her.

A clanging bell throughout Port Selkin told her that auction time was approaching. She took a sharp turn, narrowly managing not to trip over the spiked tail of a scaled scorpion man. If she hadn't had such a keen sense of direction, she might not have been able to track down where Tsunade had taken Kakashi, but within a few minutes she had come to the auction registration counter.

Tsunade was still waiting in line, tapping her manicured nails impatiently along the top rail of the dolly. Sakura hid behind a large poster advertising a career in the Intergalactic Police Force and kept careful watch while making sure Tsunade did not notice her.

When her former captain came up to the desk, the transaction went a little differently than the others. Tsunade leaned forward, whispering conspiratorially in one of the flapping violet ears of the pruny elephant man behind the desk. His gaze automatically slid down his trunk to rest in her cleavage, but then she said something that made his attention snap back to her face. He looked with renewed interest at the box on the dolly, and he hastened to wheel it around behind the desk. He shook Tsunade's hand very vigorously, and as soon as she left he passed the dolly on to an assistant.

Sakura gripped the strap of her backpack. This was her chance. Reluctantly, she left her two suitcases stowed in a cranny behind the poster, hoping that they'd somehow still be here when she returned. If worse came to worst, however, her best guns were all packed into her rucksack.

She snuck along the edge of the wall, keeping her eyes trained on the green neck of the auctioneer's assistant. He was whistling idly as he pushed the dolly along. Sakura followed him to a side room. The assistant nudged the door open with his foot and dropped the box off inside. The loud _thud_ as it hit the floor told Sakura he hadn't heeded the "FRAGILE" warning, despite the fact that it was written prominently on the box in more than one place.

She ducked out of sight as he left, but he didn't seem overly observant. Once he was safely gone, Sakura scurried to the door he had left locked. The lock was no obstacle to her— she picked it within half a minute and crept quietly into the room.

It was a simple storage space for items awaiting auction. Kakashi's box was not the largest box in there, but Sakura had no doubt that it was the most valuable. She dropped down to her knees beside the cardboard box, withdrew a sharp utility knife, and sliced a clean line across the taped flap of the box.

Several well placed cuts later, the cardboard fell back before her. Foam peanuts spilled out as Sakura gripped the tightly bent Kakashi by the armpits and heaved. She pulled him out halfway so that he was sitting upright in the box but flopping over backwards against her chest. Still holding onto him, she brought one hand around and pressed the heel of her palm firmly against the spot on his chest where Shizune had activated him, a lifetime ago.

She held her breath until she heard the telltale whirring of his machinery. After several tense seconds she felt his chest shudder beneath her hand, and he began to breathe.

A cry of relief escaped her lips— she had been so worried she would never see him again. She let go of Kakashi and scooted around the box so that she could face him. His eyelids fluttered for a minute before they pulled back to reveal unfocused eyes.

"Kakashi!" Sakura exclaimed. She grabbed his hand impulsively. He groaned and sat up, rubbing the back of his neck with his free hand.

"Where…" He blinked blearily for a moment before his eyes came into focus. They widened in surprise. "Sakura?" he said. The cloth rag had fallen off his face, so Sakura could see his lips form around her name.

Sakura grinned. "You didn't think I'd let them sell you like common scrap metal, did you?"

Kakashi made a strange motion with his arm— it looked almost like he was going to hug her but was unsure. Sakura felt such a surge of affection at the stunted gesture that she tackled him in a fierce hug, knocking them both across several boxes.

He was quite unsure of how to react. Jubilation was obvious in Sakura's sudden movement, and although it was difficult for him to evaluate his own emotional state, especially when he was so disoriented, he felt a swooping sensation in his chest that he thought might be the same thing causing Sakura to exert such pressure on his limbs.

Panic prickled up his neck. He wasn't supposed to be feeling anything of the sort. Androids were built to serve humans, not to develop fondness for them. Deeper than fondness even… the elusive myth, something that was supposed to set living creatures apart from their artificial shadows…

Dazed, he stared up at the ceiling, letting Sakura bury her head in his shoulder and laugh to herself. Try as he might to deny it, there was no question that a warm, light feeling was swelling like a child's balloon in his chest.

_Is this… happiness? _he wondered.

Whatever it was, he had never felt it so strongly as he did now.

He chuckled nervously. Perhaps there would be more time to ponder it later, but for now this strange room didn't seem like a good place to linger. "Sakura," he said, "I get the feeling we shouldn't be wherever we are…"

Sakura clambered off him, dusting off her thighs. "Right," she said, composing herself. As the perplexed Kakashi got to his feet, she scanned the room with sharp eyes. "This is the storage room for the auction. We need to find something to replace you with in the box."

Kakashi's eyes fell on her rucksack. "Do you have anything in there you can spare?"

Sakura toyed hesitantly with the strap of her pack. "I mean, I suppose one or two of my guns would be heavy enough…"

Kakashi's eyebrows flew up incredulously. "You can't have guns that heavy—"

His knees nearly buckled as she threw him one. "Never mind," he said weakly, cradling the machine gun in his arms. "Two of these would definitely do the trick."

He tipped the gun into his former cardboard prison, and Sakura did the same with another. "I hate to do this," she said, looking sadly at the departing members of her collection. "But you're more important than two lousy guns… They're just machines."

She avoided his eyes as she zipped up her pack again, although she was sure he was looking at her. "Besides," she continued briskly, "sometimes the smaller ones pack more punch. Less flashy, more concentrated."

She bent over to do her best to reseal the box. Kakashi helped, and Sakura tried not to blush when his fingers brushed against her own.

"Right," she said, straightening up. "It doesn't look brand new, but that guard only had one eye so hopefully he won't notice." She looked up at Kakashi, who was watching her with the eyes of someone awaiting instruction. The look made her feel a little bubble of pride; her authority didn't often count for much.

"We should get out of here," she said.

He nodded. "Yes. But, ah… Where are we?"

Sakura's palm met her forehead with a dull _slap_. "Sorry, I forgot to tell you," she said. "We're on Port Selkin. The auction is probably starting in a few minutes."

Kakashi's eyes narrowed. "We should wait until after the auction to leave," he said seriously. "If we try to get out while the auction is starting, it might look suspicious."

Sakura nodded. "So we should lie low until the auction's over, and then…"

"There's a hundred public transport vessels leaving a port this big," Kakashi said swiftly when Sakura fell quiet. "We'll catch one of those."

He walked over to Sakura and put a hand on her shoulder. She looked up at him in faint surprise; he usually didn't initiate physical contact. His fingers sank softly into her bare shoulder.

"Thanks," he said. Sincerity warmed his tone and wrinkled the skin around his eyes. He squeezed Sakura's shoulder briefly and then, before she could react, he quickly ruffled her messy pink locks.

She cocked an eyebrow at him as his hand retreated. "Sorry," he said hastily. "I've always wanted to do that…"

He coughed. "Okay, let's get out of here," he said, in a much more businesslike tone. "We don't want to be caught in here when they come to collect the goods for auction."

Still in a bit of a daze from what he had just done, she followed him to the door. Cracking the door open, he swept the area with a penetrating gaze before giving her a thumbs-up and slipping out.

She followed as stealthily as she could, although she felt hopelessly bumbling compared to his slick movements. He made hardly any noise as he snuck past the inattentive crowds, clearing the auction desk without so much as an odd look.

"Hang on," Sakura whispered behind him. "I need my suitcases…"

When she checked in the cranny behind the sign, she saw that one of her suitcases remained. "Better than nothing," she sighed, grabbing it by the handle and wheeling it away.

Sakura felt very nervous with Kakashi standing so brazenly out in the open, but he was such a convincing android that it was unlikely anyone would recognize him for what he was— let alone as the specific android that had been stuffed into the cardboard box. His chrome suit gleamed in the bright lights of the port.

"Hey," Sakura said suddenly, poking him accusingly in the shoulder. "You can breathe okay in here?"

To her surprise, pink rose in his cheeks— she didn't think he could blush. _Must be some sort of blood substitute_, she guessed, watching him for a response.

"Oh, that…" he said, sounding embarrassed. "Well, I… Well. I have to admit, my body adjusted automatically to the air on your ship…"

Sakura's pink eyebrows knitted together in consternation. "Then why did you keep wearing that disgusting thing?"

He avoided her eyes, pretending to be very interested in an elderly, human-sized frog hopping feebly past. "It was a gift," he said quickly. "Come on, let's move somewhere there's more people."

Her eyes round with surprise, Sakura hurried to snap into her senses so that she could follow his swift movement through the crowd. She had thought there were plenty of people here, but that was before they reached the auction hall.

Sweaty bodies mingled heatedly in the sweltering main hall. They were squeezed between pillars whose noble white surfaces were besmirched with the lowest echelons of intergalactic society. Port Selkin might have been more respectable than a hovel like Anchor 3, but auctions always attracted the shadiest crowd the universe had to offer. Sakura made sure to keep a wide berth from a particularly nasty group, which consisted of one stooped goblin-like creature, who had two buxom human women hanging off his arms and was hawking "authentic milk."

Sakura was used to dealing with unsavory characters, but she still would have much preferred to go and wait on the space bus. Kakashi, however, seemed paranoid about being conspicuous, and she didn't blame him— after all, he had spent the last hour in a cardboard box on the way to the auction block.

An enormous gong sounded on the platform raised in the middle of the hall. The elephant man from the registration desk waved a long baton authoritatively, hushing the crowd. "Attention!" he called, and his voice was magnified by a large green megaphone. "Welcome to Port Selkin! We are about to start the Summer Selkin Auction! Now, to review the procedure…"

Sakura tuned out the auctioneer's blaring voice. She looked up at Kakashi. His eyes were flashing around the auction hall, but when he noticed Sakura looking, he stopped to smile down at her.

She grinned back. "I probably look like a mess," she confessed. "But it's worth it… I couldn't let them sell you off."

His smile widened. "I'm glad you didn't."

But as she looked around, her smile faded. "I wish they hadn't done this," she said in a low voice. "It wasn't your fault that the aliens attacked…"

Kakashi took a moment to respond. "I'm happy you stopped me from being sold, but I still think it was my fault…"

Sakura frowned. "I've never met a guilty android before," she said, quietly enough so that only he could hear in the din around them.

He smiled again, this time ruefully. "You can't have met many androids."

A particularly heated auction came to a roaring close; wolf whistles and catcalls nearly drowned out their voices.

"What do you mean?" Sakura asked.

Kakashi looked down at her frankly. "Well, we're supposed to protect humans," he said. "At least, my kind are… That's where the name 'Scarecrow' comes from. It's like I'm the dummy and you all are the crops, and I'm supposed to draw people away to protect you…"

He gave a tight smile. "Obviously I haven't been doing my job so well."

Sakura's forehead had creased during his explanation. "Tsunade told us about an android much different than that," she said. Kakashi looked down at her curiously. "She said that when she and the android got close, he tried to steal her soul…"

A slim silver eyebrow crept up Kakashi's forehead incredulously. "I suppose there are always rogues," he said. "Give an evil genius with too much time on his hands a chemistry set and you never know what he'll come up with…"

Sakura snorted, and Kakashi's smile returned. The affection dancing lightly in his eyes made her wonder what it really meant, to have a soul… Sakura had always considered a soul to be a person's mettle, what they were left with when you stripped everything else away. Despite all of Sakura's scientific background telling her that her brain was supreme in everything from the shape of her nose to the depth of her character, she had always quietly harbored the belief that without flesh or bones part of her would remain intact. Did Kakashi, who was governed by an electronic chip embedded in his head, really deserve to be treated any differently?

If Sakura had learned anything from her trips around the cosmos, it was that no matter how many tentacles or tongues a person possessed, the most important characteristic was the core of their spirit. Kakashi had been nothing but a friend to her, one of loyalty and integrity. That was more than most people could hope for in this seedy corner of such a vast universe.

She opened her mouth to articulate some of this to him, but just then the auctioneer's words rang again across the auction hall.

"Next up we've got a particularly valuable commodity," his voice roared through the megaphone. His wrinkled purple trunk waved about in excitement. "Ladies and gentlemen, flora and fauna, nobles and nobodies, today I have up for auction an android— but an android unlike any you've ever seen! The _Scarecrow _model is a revolutionary development in artificial intelligence technology. Its top-of-the-line programming enables it to pass easily for a human, but it far outstrips humans in terms of speed, mathematical ability, and comprehensive powers—"

"Not saying much, is it?" muttered a blue troll-like creature behind Kakashi. Sakura shot him a sideways glare, but he was too busy picking his nose to notice.

"— excellent choices for diplomatic envoys, as they come equipped with most standard dictionaries. They can store more information than most supercomputers but also have space for personality, including new features such as pleasantries, small talk, backhand compliments, and wit! Not to mention, they also come with a healthy libido…"

There were appreciative guffaws in the crowd. "Open it already!" screeched one group of feathered women several yards ahead of Kakashi and Sakura. Sakura felt sick watching them, and was very pleased that Kakashi was not actually in the box.

"Hold on, ladies!" the auctioneer crowed gleefully. "Believe it or not, there are many more features to these elite androids! Their bones are reinforced by titanium, making them nearly indestructible—"

A jet of blue light shot straight at the box, blasting a hole cleanly through it.

The auctioneer fell back, coughing, as the box smoked coolly in the center of the stage. For a few seconds there was a terrible silence, and then screams erupted throughout the auction hall. Everyone began clambering towards the exits as several more lasers shot through the hall.

Sakura's mind pushed through the shock that had frozen her insides. _They tried to kill Kakashi,_ it told her urgently. _Get him out of here!_

But Sakura was distracted by the sight of a familiar woman scrambling up onto the stage. "My android!" she could hear Tsunade shrieking. When Tsunade got to the smoking box, however, she shrieked again, seeing this time that Kakashi was not in it.

Someone grabbed Sakura's arm and began pulling her away; her legs stumbled as they tried to adjust to the sprinting pace. She looked up and saw that it was Kakashi, trying to lead her away from the danger.

"Kakashi!" she called. Her voice barely made it over the screaming crowds, but she knew that he would be able to hear her. "We can't leave Tsunade and Shizune! They'll get killed!"

Kakashi stopped running reluctantly, his grip still firm on Sakura's arm. He glared impatiently into Sakura's eyes, but he softened when he saw the determination there. Despite everything that had happened in the last twenty-four hours, Sakura couldn't bring herself to leave her friends to die.

Kakashi felt admiration swooping in his chest. "All right," he said quickly. "But we're not going back in there unarmed."

Sakura tore open her rucksack and tossed him a gun. "I hope you know how to use it," she said, clicking the safety off one of her own.

"Do I know how to use a gun," Kakashi scoffed, and he ran after her back into the fray.

The auction hall was in chaos. Tsunade and Shizune were nowhere to be seen, but there were some new arrivals to catch Sakura and Kakashi's attention— the same types of aliens that had attacked them on the ship were now swarming through the hall, and with horror Sakura saw that they were swinging down ladders from a sleek blue ship that hovered overhead like a ghostly sentinel, its cloaking device fading into sharp reality.

"Konan!" she gasped. She had no time for a longer reaction: One of the aliens was stomping madly towards her and Kakashi. They both shot it at the same time, blasting two clean holes through its slimy green skin.

"Nice," Sakura breathed, grinning at Kakashi. He flashed a grin back before shooting deftly at another oncoming attacker. Its blue blood splattered against the adjacent wall and it fell to the floor with an almighty _thud_, its severed head rolling rapidly away.

"Come on!" he shouted, and they skidded around the fresh corpse to run towards the stage. Alarms were ringing frantically, washing the hall in swinging rays of red light. Kakashi and Sakura fought their way towards the center, discharging laser after laser, and sustaining a few minor injuries but for the most part doing an admirable job of staying alive. Unfortunately, there were far more invaders than there were people fighting, and it didn't help that Konan's ship was shooting down at them with lasers far more powerful than anything in their guns.

A heavy tentacle knocked Sakura to the side. She had been caught off guard, having just decapitated two aliens with one well-placed laser blast. The alien jumped down on her, its drool dribbling on her face as it tore viciously at her cheek— she screamed, feeling the fresh blood spill out, but kicked blindly at the monster's stomach. It buckled backwards, giving her enough space to jump up and send her boot swinging towards its head. She made contact with a sickening _crunch _and drove the heel of her boot into its skull, piercing its slimy green skin like a gelatinous fruit snack.

One of its tentacles shot towards her leg, wrapping tightly around her boot. She shrieked indignantly, pointing her gun at the monster's wounded head, but another tentacle knocked the gun out of her hands. It clattered uselessly to the floor and the tentacle snaked around her wrist, dragging her down hard to the floor.

"Ow!" she squealed when her tailbone hit the floor. Pain blossomed in her rump, but she gave it little thought as she was too preoccupied by the suction cups attaching slickly to her stomach. The edge of the tentacle tickled the hem of her shorts, and she writhed madly on the ground, trying to throw it off of her, but it was fruitless; with a gleeful cackle from the monster its tentacle had dipped down her shorts and was spreading slime all around her coarse pink hairs, running along the seam of her nether regions. She clamped her inner muscles down hard, trying to keep it out, but the muscular tentacle was persistent and strong as it pried apart her thighs—

"Get away from her!" Kakashi's fierce roar was punctuated by a powerful punch to the monster's jaw. It let out a terrible screeching wail and was knocked back a little, but its grip on Sakura was so tight that it hadn't been dislodged. Kakashi reached down and ripped the tentacle from around Sakura's waist, ripping the bulbous green skin with his bare hands. The monster screeched again and tried to deck him, but Kakashi kicked back at it, hitting it in the yellow teeth. The force of the attack forced it to relinquish its slimy grip on Sakura, and as soon as her hand was free her fingers scrambled for her gun— she wrapped her fingers around the handle and swung the gun up, aimed for the monster's lopsided face, and pulled the trigger.

The green head exploded in a shower of blue blood. Shaking, Sakura rose to her feet. Kakashi grabbed her immediately, gripping her shoulders with firm hands.

"Sakura, are you all right?" he demanded, his eyes moving frantically between her own. "It didn't— Are you—"

The concern in his eyes calmed her shaking hands. "That's twice you've saved me like that," she said. "And don't even say that crap about endangering my life anyway, because Konan has wanted my head mounted on her wall since way before you were ever in the picture."

Kakashi opened his mouth to say something, but the sudden whine of a siren distracted him. They both looked up and saw a large blue hovercraft speeding towards the ground— exactly where they were standing.

Instinctively they each flew backwards, breaking apart from each other. Kakashi's hands left Sakura's shoulders just as the hovercraft landed, sending a _whoosh _of air gusting from all sides. Sakura shielded her eyes shut against the sudden wind, squinting through the cracks in her fingers to see that uniformed aliens were teeming off the hovercraft. All around the auction hall, identical hovercrafts had touched the ground, and several were still swarming in the air, shooting directly at Konan's ship. _The Paper Crane_'s shield flickered into life, protecting the ship with a sphere of shimmering blue, but her mercenaries on the ground were not so lucky as the Intergalactic Police Force took them on with full force.

Sakura scanned the chaos for Kakashi, but the hulking hovercraft blocked him from view. "Kakashi!" she cried out, pushing past the army of blue-suited police. "Kakashi, where are you?"

Meanwhile, the bridge of _The Paper Crane_ was alive with booming alarms. Konan's face was alternately bathed in blue and red as they flashed wildly around her. She was leaning forward on the main control panel, gripping the sharp metal edge with white-knuckled intensity.

"Your Majesty! Your Majesty!" Her red-eyed assistant flapped frantically towards her, his papery white skin even paler than usual. "The Intergalactic Police Force has—"

"Do you think I'm an idiot?" Konan snarled. She glared through the main window at the bedlam below. "I recognize them just as well as you do!"

"Y-y-your Excellency," quibbled the servant, "we should pull out, this was a reckless place to be—"

"Insubordination!" roared Konan, and she wheeled around on the spot and shot him straight through his central eye. With a tortured wail he fell backwards, landing dead on the carpet.

"I will not leave empty-handed," she said, storming terribly across the bridge. "I was a fool for trusting those brainless thugs to do my job for me. No, it's time I go and teach those girls a lesson myself…"

The metal doors swished away in the face of her cold glare, and she descended tinny metal steps to reach the escape pod. Leaving her ship to fend for itself, Konan sealed herself within the pod and jammed her manicured thumb against the release button. With a great rumbling noise, the ship ejected her like a sneeze and sent the pod shooting down.

It crashed into the marble floor with an explosion of ruptured stone. Konan extricated herself quickly, holding her laser gun at the ready. The pandemonium of the police crafts' battle with the mercenaries was so great that Konan's crash went unnoticed by all but the nearest two policewomen, whom she promptly shot in the chest. They crumpled to the ground and Konan leapt over them, keeping a sharp eye out for any sign of her three targets as she wove through the fighting.

It didn't take her long to find one. Tsunade had always been easy to spot, with her gargantuan breasts and cacophonous temper. Konan saw her fending off three tentacled mercenaries. A smirk curled Konan's lip. _Good, she's distracted_, she calculated, stalking towards Tsunade like a lioness to her prey. _Easy pickings, then…_

"Oh no, you don't!"

Konan ducked swiftly down— a bottle green boot narrowly missed her head. Skipping backwards, Konan held her gun at the ready to confront her new foe. Her assailant recovered from the failed attack and straightened up, pushing her wild pink bangs out of her face so she could face her opponent properly.

"Oh, it's the runt," Konan drawled, boredom dulling her tone.

With a feral roar Sakura launched herself once again at Konan. The blue-haired woman twisted out of the way just in time to avoid Sakura's speeding fist. Konan hastily switched her gun from kill to stun, aiming a shot at Sakura's neck, but Sakura swerved away. Her green eyes flashed, and then she jeered at Konan.

"Come and get me, you tyrannical bitch!" she crowed before dashing away. Irked, Konan cast one last, longing glance on Tsunade before hurriedly deciding she would come back for her once she had the pink one as bait.

She tracked Sakura through the flying debris of the ruined auction hall, ducking around battling forces. The battle raging no longer interested her— she had eyes only for her prey.

Sakura, meanwhile, had no real plan. She was merely trying to buy time, leading Konan away from the others— and keeping a hopeful eye out for Kakashi, whom she hadn't been able to find since they were separated by the landing police. She took a sharp turn around the edge of the hall. Konan shot a laser beam after her; she felt it skim her cheek hotly as it barely missed.

She clambered over some toppled boxes and ducked behind one as Konan shot again.

"This isn't hide-and-seek!" Konan seethed. She skittered around the edge of the boxes, swinging her gun smoothly around her to cover all angles. "Come out and play, Sakura! Your new home awaits you!"

Sakura answered with a blast from her laser gun. Usually her aim was deadly accurate, but Konan had excellent instincts and stepped back just in time. The laser missed her but knocked her outstretched gun aside. Seeing opportunity, Sakura jumped out from her hiding place and brought a punch swinging towards Konan's face. Konan's icy eyes met hers for an instant before Konan bobbed down, grabbing Sakura's wrist.

"I've got you, you little—"

Sakura shot at Konan with her free hand. Her aim was off, but although she didn't hit Konan, the sudden blast was enough to make Konan release her.

Konan drew another gun from her looping white belt and shot at the precise moment that Sakura did; their lasers met in the middle and ricocheted off, shattering glass windows set high along the walls.

Kakashi had just dispatched another mercenary, gleaning particular satisfaction from wrapping its tentacle around its own neck to strangle it. _That's for Sakura,_ he thought savagely.

The sound of breaking glass caught his attention. He whipped his head around but could not see the source of the noise— it was removed from the hall.

_It could be reinforcements for Konan! _When the thought struck him he raised his gun and ran towards the noise.

He came stealthily towards the bend where he saw the skeletal remains of the window's design. He listened closely for the sounds of mobilizing aliens, ready to shoot, but far from his expectations he heard a familiar voice—

"Forget it, Konan!" Sakura shouted. Konan was an excellent defensive fighter, evading Sakura's blows in a graceful dance. Sakura's style was rougher but was serving her just as well— Konan hadn't hit her yet, although she wasn't aiming to kill.

"I'd rather die than join your boyfriend's freak show!" she yelled passionately, aiming another laser shot at Konan's porcelain face. Konan stepped deftly out of the way, jumping up onto one of the window ledges amidst shards of shattered glass. She sneered coldly down at Sakura, who glowered and shot again.

Kakashi peered stealthily around the wall, watching the scene unfold. The grip on his gun tightened. He was going to jump in— two against one would greatly better Sakura's odds—

But just as he braced himself to bolt into the fray, he saw something that made him pause. Konan had tapped her ear, her eyes flashing to the side. She looked as if she were listening for something, but what…?

The answer struck Kakashi like a bolt of lightning. _It's an earpiece_, he realized, and sure enough, as Konan jumped from the windowsill to avoid a blast from Sakura's gun, Kakashi saw a glint of white revealed by the hair that streamed away in the quick motion.

He knew what he had to do. Crouching down out of sight, he closed his eyes and began to shut down his extraneous systems, just as he had done when he destroyed the aliens on the ship. He cast aside table manners, appreciation of beauty, affinity for furry animals… The only humanistic feature he maintained was a strong emotion he couldn't name, but it had welled up inside of him when he saw that Sakura was in danger, so kept it where it burned in his chest and used it to provoke his mathematical systems into overdrive.

He visualized a vast, black plane, where the screeching security systems of Port Selkin dominated. Their erratic red lines flashed across his new eye's vision, but he sifted through them quickly, navigating between the scarlet scratches and signals. He was looking for something smaller, a signal that was only going to one small location…

He flew through the darkness until a regular flicker of blue caught his attention. Recognizing it, he locked on rerouted all of his power to decoding it. He tapped into the heavily coded blue signal, chipping away at the intricate code with the formidable chisel of his advanced hard drive. He wished he could spare an eye to watch the fight several yards away, but all of his energy was devoted to this: He could only hope that Sakura would hold her own until he broke the code.

She was doing a fair job. The hot glow around Konan's lasers had grazed her skin a few times now, leaving stinging scrapes, but direct contact had been avoided and she was still fighting. The longer the fight went on, the more Sakura taunted Konan, trying to egg her on into recklessness. It wasn't working— Konan was getting quieter, but it meant that she was concentrating even more, calculating an opening where she could end the battle by knocking Sakura unconscious. Sakura had an advantage in that she cared little for Konan's fate, whereas Konan was still trying to avoid killing her.

"If you can't even lock your palace door properly, what makes you think you can take care of me?" Sakura goaded, swerving out of the way as Konan's lasers exploded several cardboard boxes. "You couldn't keep us out of your stupid palace, and you're not dragging us back in!"

"Need I remind you," Konan hissed, ranging quietly around Sakura, "that your plan to overtake me _failed_?"

Sakura let out a coarse laugh. "That's only because your boyfriend stepped in at the last minute," she jeered. "Poor Konan has to have all the little boys come and save her! She couldn't just be a big girl and take care of it herself!"

"How dare you!" Konan ran at her, whipping forth a rain of sharp projectile weapons. Sakura jumped away and avoided most of them, but one penetrated her thick boot. She let out a little hiss of pain as the sharpened tip pierced her skin, but she didn't let it slow her down.

"I'm more powerful a woman than any of you sluts could ever hope to be!" Konan continued angrily, swiping at Sakura and missing. "We'll see who's laughing when you're begging Pain to grace you with his touch—"

They were suddenly very close. Konan was surprised but Sakura didn't hesitate and slapped Konan hard across the face.

Konan flew back from the force of the blow. "I already told you," Sakura said in a low, dangerous voice, pointing her gun at Konan's face. "I would rather shoot myself than let you drag me off to his sick harem—"

Konan rolled away from her gun blast; it shot a smoking hole in her flowing gown but missed her back by inches. She leapt to her feet and skated backwards, putting distance between the two opponents.

"Being a concubine of Lord Pain is an honor high above anything you could ever accomplish in your own puny life!" Konan spat indignantly.

"You're pathetic," Sakura shot back in disgust. "What sort of woman betrays her own kind like that!"

"You're so simple-minded," Konan growled. "Being a woman doesn't endear you to me anymore than being human does."

She cocked her head to the side. "Pain will like you," she said, but it didn't sound like a compliment. "He likes his wenches spirited—"

Hot, bubbling rage overflowed in Sakura, and she ran at Konan with red blinding her vision. Her blood-curdling battle cry echoed through the hall, and around the corner Tsunade head perked up in recognition.

"Sakura!" she hissed, hope leaping in her chest — she easily killed the alien blocking her way with a hot bullet from her traditional gun and barreled past his corpse, out of sight before he even hit the ground. Her heeled boots crunched debris and stray limbs alike as she ran towards the source of her friend's voice.

Just as she rounded the corner, Kakashi broke the code. He accessed the stream of signals bleeping towards the earpiece in Konan's ear and immediately began to corrupt it, jamming the waves with dissonant interjections and impossible calculations. He forced through increasingly intolerable signals, recoding the signal in a way that would inevitably overload it—

Tsunade saw only the smoke from the explosion. Her honey-colored eyes were wide with horror as she hurried past Kakashi's hiding place and towards the scorched white tiles where Konan and Sakura had been fighting moments before.

"Sakura!" she screamed. "Sakura, where—"

She was knocked aside by Kakashi, who had streaked from his hiding place as soon as his motor functions were restored. He dove into the clearing smoke, groping for Sakura. He didn't know how close she had been— if she were hurt—

But she wasn't. Coughing, she emerged from the smoke and fell clumsily against him. He caught her and gripped her shoulders, his eyes roving her face in frenetic worry.

"Are you all right?" he said hoarsely. The glow from his dark eye, still warming up from being deactivated, cast a small white light on her eyelid. "Sakura, are you okay?"

She nodded. Kakashi steered her away from the smoke but maintained his firm grip on her shoulders.

Still reeling from the sudden explosion, Sakura was nevertheless regaining her senses. She cracked open her eyes and saw Kakashi looking down at her, his face lined with anxiety.

"Kakashi…" she coughed. She noticed that his red eye was still spinning slightly, but she didn't care— when she said his name his face had lit up, smoothing away some of his worry. She couldn't remember seeing such a happy sight.

In a rush of emotion she wrapped her arms around his waist, hugging him properly for the first time. Her nails scrabbled at his back and she pressed her head against his chest. It felt just like the chest of a human, of a strong and living human man, until she heard the ticking— for instead of a steady heartbeat there was within him an incessant ticking noise, unmistakably mechanical in nature.

A hard sob lurched out of her throat. She buried her face deeper and cried baldly against his chest. She had gone from feeling ludicrously happy to hopelessly miserable in a matter of seconds— just when he was feeling so human, the ticking had brought his mechanical roots slamming to the forefront of her mind…

Yet something drew her out of her despair, something soft and tender. Kakashi was stroking her hair soothingly, smoothing her bangs back out of her face.

"It's all right," he said softly. His lips moved gently against the crown of her head. His other arm slid around her waist, hugging her closer to him. "You're safe now…"

Sakura turned her shining eyes up to him. His eyes were warm, and that was suddenly much more important to her than any stupid ticking noise. Her heart knew that such compassion had to be more than an electronic switchboard of ones and zeroes. She rose up on her tiptoes and crushed her lips against his.

The hand he had left on her head froze. Sakura did not relent, reaching up to grip the silver hair on the back of his neck as she deepened the kiss. Her tongue ran hungrily across the seam of his numb lips, requesting entrance; he blinked and then parted his lips to accommodate her, and he very quickly got the hang of kissing her back.

They swayed on the spot, locked together at the lips. Kakashi gasped as Sakura stroked his lower back; he felt her lips stretch in a lazy grin as her tongue continued to tangle with his own, lapping at the corner of his mouth in hot strokes.

"What's the matter?" she said softly. "Don't tell me you've never kissed before…"

Kakashi laughed, a little bewildered at the sensations flooding hotly through his lower abdomen. "Can't say I have, actually…"

Sakura drew back, and despite the long cut along her cheek and the soot blackening her complexion, he had never seen someone so beautiful.

A mischievous grin danced across her face. "Well then," she said, "it seems we have some uncharted territory to explore…" She leaned forward, still on tiptoe, and whispered something in his ear. Said ears turned red as he processed her words, but he quickly composed himself and gave her a debonair smile.

"Erectile tissue?" he repeated, playing with a strand of her grimy pink hair. "We might be able to find some if we look hard enough…"

A pointed cough startled them both. They whipped their heads around to see Tsunade, now fully visible a few yards away in the clearing smoke.

She eyed them beadily, her gaze moving across their frozen faces from Sakura to Kakashi. She seemed calm, but by now they both knew that her temper could erupt at any moment, so they remained apprehensively still.

"You're a bit of a one-trick pony," she said finally, "but it's a damn good trick." She pointed at something behind them. They turned, still with their arms around each other, and saw a limp, white-gloved hand stretched out from beneath a large chunk of rubble that had fallen from the wall in the explosion.

"If your mechanical trickery didn't kill her, that sure did," Tsunade said shortly. "I know it's a bit of a mood-killer after erectile tissue and all that."

Stowing her gun in the holster on her belt, she looked back at them and said, "I owe you an apology," she said uncomfortably. "So… I'll get back to you when I can word it a little more nicely, but for now, damn good job, Kakashi."

A small smile of disbelief curved Sakura's lips. It seemed that Tsunade had finally come around… She grinned up at Kakashi, but he was frowning.

"Where's Shizune?" he asked, removing his arms from Sakura. She felt oddly cold without them despite the sweltering heat of the chaotic port.

Tsunade's face fell. "I…"

"It's all right, Tsunade," Sakura said quickly. "Shizune is in a bathroom out by the vendors." She moved away from Kakashi and led the way, skirting around the ongoing violence — the Police Force was breaching _The Paper Crane_'s shield, and most of the mercenaries had been killed — to come across the bathroom where she had knocked out their mechanic. Tsunade pushed past her and let out a huge cry of relief when she saw Shizune, still safely passed out against the sink.

Kakashi lifted Shizune gently from the sink, catching her goggles when they almost fell off her face. "She'll be fine," he said, feeling her pulse. "She looks like she was just stunned…"

Tsunade and Sakura's eyes met. Sakura squirmed under Tsunade's furious glare.

"You did this?" Tsunade demanded.

Sakura nodded. "I… I had to," she said quietly.

A heavy sigh deflated Tsunade's chest and she rubbed the bridge of her nose in frustration. "You're very reckless, Sakura… but Shizune is safe… and so are you."

There was a tremulous moment before Tsunade looked up and clapped her on the shoulder.

"I'm sorry, Sakura," she said sincerely. The words were so rare and genuine; Sakura wasn't sure how to respond. Tsunade spared her the necessity, rounding on Kakashi and the unconscious Shizune.

"Right," she said, returning to her usual brusque tones. "Why don't we get the hell out of this place before anyone finds out we're the reason this mayhem started, eh?"

Sakura grinned. "Sounds like a plan." She turned her smile on Kakashi, who returned it with a new level of affection. If she hadn't known any better, she would have called it a meticulously calculated attempt at reproducing human fondness… But Sakura did know better. Binary be damned, Sakura knew it when she saw it, and what she saw twinkling merrily in his eyes was nothing less than love.


End file.
